The Wanderer and the King
by Sigrid Sigbjornsdotter
Summary: Aragorn is happy - as the beloved ruler of a flourishing kingdom, with Arwen at his side and peace finally here, how could he not? But two years after his crowning, the arrival of old friends in the night turns his world upside down. For he may have been born a king, but in his heart he is still a ranger.
1. The Whistle of the Wren

**EDIT**: I never knew there were that many errors in my texts but OH GAWD, there were! Thanks to my amazing beta Atiaran all of those errors has been fixed, and the story should be much better and a lot easier to read :)

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I can´t believe I´m actually publishing this. I haven´t even written the next chapter, OMG! But I´ve been working on it for months, yes, _months, _now so I´m pretty tired of it.

Actually I´ve been working on a dozen of different stories on the same theme, but this is what it became in the end. Hope you´ll enjoy!

Disclaimer: I´d be happy to own a handful of muck from middle earth... sadly, I don´t.

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**The Whistle of the Wren**

The wanderer stopped by the roadside to push his dripping hood away from his face. It was raining, an early spring rain that turned the road to muck and the last of the snow to pools of brown water. Grey clouds hung low over the hills, all the way from one horizon to the next, thick and dense and without the slightest sign of movement. The road - naught more than a narrow ribbon of trampled ground, where the grass hadn´t even bothered to start growing - was all ankle-deep mud and trickles of water now, vanishing in a curtain of rain and fog, winding and twisting to where the soft hills gave way to a climbing forest.

The wanderer turned to look over his shoulder. He was a tall man, slender, but bent under a heavy pack, with dark hair plastered to his forehead and water dripping from the tip of his nose. There was a slight frown on his face. He had mud all over his boots and up to his knees, because he had waded over a flooded stream earlier and the water had been deeper than he thought. His cloak was so heavy with water it dragged at the ground.

Behind him, there was nothing but the same rolling hills, covered in yellow winter grass, glinting here and there with water and dotted with thorny bushes and naked trees. The City had vanished in thick grey fog. When he realised that, that the City was behind him, that he had gotten away, the wanderer felt something lift from his heart, like a bird spreading its wings and flying away with all his worries. He straightened up. Suddenly he could breathe.

It was gone.

Something bubbled in the wanderer's chest, threatening to break free. All around him the rain washed down, hammering on the little coltsfoots dotted by the roadside, but the wanderer didn't mind. He spread his arms like wings and tossed his head back and in the rain, he laughed.

He laughed because for the first time in many months, he felt free.

* * *

Aragorn looked up, startled.

A signal?

No, not a signal; only a bird. He had lost himself in memories and for a moment thought he was back in the north, where the rangers gave the whistle of the wren when they didn´t dare to call out to each other: _I am here, where are you? _But he wasn't back in the north and there was no reason to use signals here. Who would have used them anyway? Of the rangers living in the White City, who would want him something in the middle of the night? Who would call to him in the garden instead of using the gate?

No, it was no signal, and if he hadn't been so lost in thought when he heard it, he would have been able to tell the difference. It was just an ordinary wren. Wrens were known for singing even in the middle of winter.

Aragorn shook his head at his own silliness, but he couldn't really find it in his heart to laugh. It was strange, because he usually laughed very easily; much easier now than just a few years ago. The world was a happier place now, and he lived a happier life, had more opportunities to laugh. So why couldn't he laugh now, when an innocent little wren had made him think someone called to him from the shadows of the Queen´s garden? Why couldn't he laugh because he had thought he was a ranger again?

And why couldn't he just let the incident go?

Sighing, he sat down on the low wall surrounding the garden. It was completely dark, only the snow shimmering in the light spilling through an upper window. The citadel was embedded in silence. Cold winds and more snow came down from the mountains and his breath came in white puffs. Aragorn shivered and thought it was time to sneak back into the warmth of the bedchamber, but he didn't want to just yet. For some moments more he wanted to sit here where he could feel the wind tug at his clothes, where he could see the black shapes of the mountains.

He pulled one leg to his chest and let the other dangle over the City far beneath him. He had lost count of the number of times he had woken well before dawn like this, unable to fall asleep again; tossing and twisting in the slippery silk sheets before giving up and leaving the bed. His weariness was beginning to be visible. He had dark rings under his eyes now and was constantly tired and unfocused. But, as Faramir had suggested, maybe it was just the winter weather. Winters in Gondor were much milder than those of the north, but they weren't pleasant; there never was much snow because there would always be a rainy day washing it away before it was more than ankle-deep, and so it was cold, wet and windy, with the roads turning to long trails of muck, and the short grey days and the long grey nights melting into each other, forming a long chain of tedious longing for spring. It was no wonder, Faramir had said, that a man grew restless during this time.

There it was again, wasn't it? The wren. Again he had been lost in thought and hadn't heard it clearly. Was it really a wren? Why would a wren be singing in the middle of the night?

What would anyone else do singing like a wren in the middle of the night?

Aragorn pressed his hands to his temples. It was no good, thinking of the life he had left behind. Wasn't he glad it was over? Wasn't he happy? Yes he was, he could truthfully admit that he was. He was just longing for that old life because... well, maybe in a way he had been happy then, too.

_I left it behind_, he thought, pressing his hands even harder to his temples as if he could force the thoughts out of his head. _And I am content with what I have instead. I don't need anything more. I have lived this life for almost two years now and I'm happy. I am._

Almost two years.

It was hard to imagine. Almost two years – it had been May – since he stood in the sun and the courtyard outside the citadel was crowded with cheering people and he was made King of the West. Almost two years since he officially left the life of the rangers and became what he was born to be. The world had changed so much since that day he didn't recognize it. There was peace now, and the children born today were born into a happy world, a world with grave memories and deep scars, but a world that had risen from its knees and stood firmly on its feet again. It was a world with a proudly raised head. A friendly world, but also a world of order, with a strong king; a world were roads dug further and further into the wilderness and houses were built where the lands had been untamed. It was a world of Men now. One day there would be no life of the rangers, because there would be so little wilderness for the rangers to live in. Not soon; not in a hundred years. But one day, Aragorn was certain of it, the world he had known would be completely gone.

Did he grieve? Sitting on top of the white wall, resting his cheek against his knee, Aragorn admitted he did, a little. Not that he would have ever been able to go back to that life, but somehow he would have liked it if others could have done that. Most of the rangers he had known had settled down now and he had given them high positions if they wanted, but some of them had gone back into the wild after the crowning. He imagined them on the roads now, living the life they had always lived. Some people, he thought, didn't fit into a world of order. He was glad he wasn't one of them.

Sometimes, he admitted, it had been hard. It had been hard to go from a ranger of the wild to the King of the West. He hadn't been ready for it, born to it or not.

A memory flashed past like a bird on swift wings: a memory from a spring day many years ago, when the air was full of humming bees and the forest floor covered in buckrams and cowslips. It was the first time he left Imladris on his own. He remembered climbing halfway up the mountains just to see the view, the vast forests, the distant horizon; and he remembered tossing his head back and laughing because the wild stretched out so far before his feet and he was free to go wherever he wanted, as untamed as the roadless lands before him.

"This is my kingdom," he had said. "This land is free and wild and untamed and so am I. So am I!"

Aragorn lifted his head a little. He couldn't see much in the dark – there were no stars and no moon – but he could distinguish the white houses below, almost shimmering a little, and the thin layer of snow on the streets. Somewhere far away the river Anduin glittered faintly. In daylight he would have been able to see all the way to the mountains in the east, with Ithilien as a dark green line by their feet, and if he looked south, he would have been able to see a distant shimmer that was the Sea. This was his kingdom. Or rather half of it, but Arnor wasn't much to boast about yet, although the lands were beautiful and roads and towns were being built up quickly. This was his kingdom, his true kingdom, and it was vast and splendid, and he was proud of it. If ever he felt something was missing, he pushed that feeling away. It was a selfish feeling and he was a king. His interest was the kingdom and nothing else.

Again the wren sang and he winced, suddenly remembering the pain so vividly it felt like the stab of a knife in his heart. It had been hard to adjust to that: the kingdom and nothing else. It had been hard to leave the life of the rangers. When the first summer came and went and he couldn't go as he wanted, when he spent the days writing letters and negotiating with ambassadors and noblemen, when all he wanted was to spend time with his friends and with Arwen and he couldn't, then he felt like a slave who had to work so much he never had time to even wish for freedom. It had hurt. He had seen his life stretch out before him, all too long and all too painful, a chain of grey days and nights just like the winter, only with no end but his own death.

He had hoped it would get better, but it didn't. When the autumn came and the leaves turned sparkling red outside his window, and all his friends had left, and peace began to settle down in Gondor, then he rode around the kingdom to see how things fared; but riding at the head of a royal retinue, with hundreds of soldiers and servants and wagons and a long trail of cattle and people to tend them, slowing everything down and making the slightest movement slow and laborious, wasn't like travelling alone. Arwen had been there to brighten the days, but even she couldn't chase away the longing in his heart. Not when he lay awake in the great royal pavilion and saw the lights of the campfires through the embroidered fabric, wondering how it would feel to be out there, just a simple man among the others. Not when northern winds tore at his clothes in the mornings when the retinue made ready to leave. Not when the dark autumn nights were dotted with stars and the moon hung low above the plain and the greatness of the world seemed to stretch out around him – but always out of his reach. Then he felt like a caged animal, a wild beast trapped and chained and only able to see the horizon through the thick bars of its prison.

But as every bad thing, this had its end. One day – a day of early spring, if he remembered correctly – he had woken and found Arwen at his side, and suddenly he had just realised it was worth it. Indeed, it was worth anything. He had looked at her in the golden morning light until she woke too, and when she smiled at him, he smiled back, thinking that freedom wasn't too high a price for her. It was actually perfectly fair. Arwen was simply worth everything he could give her, everything he could sacrifice.

After that morning, he never longed for anything again, and he felt his life expand. He realised, in time, that he wasn't caged, unless he chose to see himself as such. It was just that he had his duties and his limited amount of time, but how many people, truly, had all time they wanted and freedom to do anything? He was a king, after all, and he could do almost anything he wanted, as long as he didn't offend important noblemen. He could joke with his soldiers, be friendly to the young pages and the servants and smile at the stable boys, and as time went by and things settled down in the kingdom – it had been somewhat chaotic at first, when Gondor suddenly had both a king, peace and new-found allies in the south after so many years of decay – he had time to himself and for Arwen. He wasn't as relaxed in his role as Faramir was and not as used to court as Arwen, who had, after all, been brought up rather like an elven princess. But he managed, and now, almost two years after his crowning, he was happy. Satisfied. At least that was what he told himself.

But then he heard it again, closer this time, and he leapt up from the wall.

That was no wren.

_It was no wren._

It was a signal, meant for him, and it came from the tree that grew by the wall, the tree that was the only way to get in or out of the citadel when the gate was closed. Legolas had found it a few weeks after Aragorn became king, growing in the back yard of one of the many abandoned houses on the sixth level, and they guessed it had only escaped being cut down because no one had noticed how tall it had become. Since Legolas hated to be trapped somewhere, even by something as friendly as a door, Aragorn had agreed to keep the tree; not many knew of it anyway. He gave the abandoned house to Faramir and Éowyn so they could make sure no one could get to it who shouldn't be let into the palace, but truth was it took an elf to climb it without help. Or at least someone who had been trained by elves. Aragorn might have succeeded, if he had tried.

And now someone was sitting in that tree, calling to him with the wren's whistle. Aragorn stared at it intently. Maybe he saw a shape among the dark branches, and maybe he did not. It would have been unsafe to go close to it – kings were assassinated at times, after all, and he had no weapons – and even if it was a friend of his hiding in that tree, it might be a friend who couldn´t resist pulling him a prank if there was an opportunity. He had a many such friends.

Deciding it was best, he kept a safe distance from the tree and whistled the wren's song back in reply: _I hear you, I am here!_ There was a short silence, then came another whistle, that of the blue tit: _Is it safe?_

"It's safe," Aragorn said out loud. They had never come up with a signal for that since, if it was safe, there wasn't any reason to keep hiding.

In the next second he heard something moving through branches, far too quietly for a ranger but too loudly for Legolas. A dark shape came climbing up close to the trunk, then balanced on a thick limb over to the wall and onto it. Despite the wide cloak and the hood hiding its face, Aragorn instinctively knew who it was. He realised there should be one more coming up the moment before a second shape slipped out onto the branch and over to the wall where the first one perched, watching Aragorn from beneath the hood as if waiting for him to come closer. For some time they merely looked at each other, two dark shapes and the king. Finally he managed to speak.

"Elladan," he said, looking at the first one. "Elrohir." He might not be able to see who was who, but he still knew it, instinctively maybe.

The shapes nodded.

They stared at each other for a few seconds more, waiting for the other to move first. Then Aragorn burst out laughing, so unexpectedly even to himself he couldn´t stop it, and whatever it was that held them back vanished in less than an instant. The twins jumped down from the wall, grinning, and Aragorn walked over to hug them both. Elrohir must have missed him a lot, because he didn't try to break free.

"What on Arda," Aragorn said, looking from Elrohir to Elladan with an incredulous smile, "are you doing here? _Now? _I haven't had a word from you in months! And why by the stars of Varda did you climb that tree when you could have used the blasted gate?"

The twins looked at each other with identical mischievous smiles.

"We were going to use the gate," Elrohir admitted. "But they don't let anyone in at night. Not even those who claim they're kin to the king."

"Especially not them," Elladan added, somewhat irritated. "They must have thought we were assassins or something. We gave up trying to persuade them when they threatened to arrest us."

Aragorn lifted his eyebrows still higher. "Exactly how did you try to persuade them?"

"Well," Elladan said with exasperated sigh and a glance at his younger twin, "what is a man to do when politeness doesn't work? Or rather, what does Elrohir do?"

Elrohir grinned. "It was quite amusing. Anyway, we were going to stay at the Singing Swan, but then Elladan remembered this tree, so we sneaked into Faramir's and Éowyn's garden – you really should tell them to guard it better, a troll could have gotten past the watch – and then we thought we saw someone in the garden. It was Dan who thought it was you."

"Yeah, I wasn't sure, so we didn't dare to just climb over the wall and let ourselves be seen. Could have been unpleasant, if you were someone else."

"Very unpleasant," Aragorn agreed. "Did it never occur to you you could have sent me a note beforehand? The guards would have let you in if they had been told someone would come."

"Oh, Estel," Elladan sighed, "are you always going to be that stupid? It wouldn't have been a surprise if we sent you a note!"

Aragorn shook his head, smiling. At least his brothers hadn't changed at all. They even wore the same old grey cloaks, ragged at the hem now, as they had worn when they travelled with the rangers. Indeed, when Aragorn took a step back to look them over, they looked exactly like a couple of rangers; their clothes worn out and dusty from the road, simple quivers and bows flung over their shoulders and a rugged leather scabbard with a plain sword in their belts.

"Hey," he said, "did you come on foot? All the way from Imladris?"

"We did," said Elrohir. "Why not?"

"Well, why? You could have taken horses."

"We didn't."

"I can see that."

Aragorn frowned. There was something disturbing him, but he didn't know what. It wasn't as if he felt ashamed for his brothers dressing so simply when he was a king. It wasn't as if there was anything unusual about it either.

"You haven't been hunting orcs, have you?"

"There aren't many orcs left to hunt."

"No, but have you hunted those that are left?"

Elladan shook his head. "Nay, Estel, we haven't. We don't do that any more. We've gotten our revenge."

"Good," Aragorn said, and he was truly relieved, because for a moment he had feared that not even the fall of Sauron had been enough for his brothers; that they still weren't at peace, that they still couldn't rest until every single orc in the world had paid for what happened to their mother. Apparently they had finally let it go.

"So why did you come on foot?" he asked.

To his surprise, Elladan and Elrohir sighed deeply.

"What?"

"We thought you'd be happy," Elrohir said and looked almost hurt. "Not that you would start some sort of interrogation, as if we were intruders or something."

"You are intruders."

"You know what I mean."

"I do," Aragorn admitted. "I'm sorry. I was a bit... unprepared."

That was the truth, he realised. They hadn't only surprised him, they had unconsciously brought down the wall that he had built to protect himself from his memories. He could live the life of a king, but only if he forgot the life of the rangers. By showing up unexpectedly they had brought those memories back, without giving him time to prepare; he had been startled, overwhelmed, and the wall had fallen. That was what disturbed him about their arrival. That was why he wanted them to go.

The whole situation was so familiar. Here they were, his brothers, back from one of their long journeys, with a thousand new stories and maybe some news from Eryn Galen or the other rangers. As so often they had arrived in the middle of the night, and his first instinct should be to ask if they had been in battle, if they had wounds that needed to be tended, if he should wake the healers; and they, of course, would say they were fine. They would be tired after the long journey, but they would have so much to tell him, and Aragorn would blow life into the embers in the hearth in his room and they would sit down on the floor and talk until dawn. That was how it should be. That was how it used to be. That was exactly what he had tried to forget.

"To be honest," Elladan said, interrupting his thoughts, "there is a reason we came on foot." He looked at his twin. "Is it time to tell him, Ro?"

"I should think so, Dan."

They looked at Aragorn, eyes glowing.

"What is it?"

"We´ve been thinking," Elladan said. "And we have a plan, of sorts. You've been stuck here long enough. A ranger isn't meant to be stuck."

"I am not a ranger."

"Not officially, no. But we're not officially rangers either and yet we _are_ rangers, in a way. You always used to hate winters, Estel, because you couldn't go as you wanted. Don't you hate this?"

"As a matter of fact I don't," he lied, then asked, eager to get this conversation over with: "What have you been planning, then?"

Elrohir beamed at him. "We are planning to leave. And we are thinking you might go with us."

"We're aware it might be against the etiquette and such, so we´ll do it in secret," Elladan added eagerly. "It wouldn't be very hard. You'd only have to say you were ill and people wouldn't wonder why the king didn´t show up."

"It wouldn't be a long trip," Elrohir said, "to the coast maybe - it depends on what you want."

They looked at him expectantly.

"What do you say?"

Aragorn looked from one twin to the other and fought not to laugh, because they looked just like children on their birthday, but he stifled it. He was going to make them disappointed, and he was sorry for that.

"No," he said.

"No?" they repeated. "But, Estel..."

"Don't be foolish," Aragorn said. "I can't do such a thing. It's too risky."

"Why would it be? It's not like it would be dangerous, no one would have to know a thing..."

"Ro's right, I can´t see any reason..."

"Well, I can," Aragorn cut them off. "I have a kingdom to take care of, and I have a reputation. What you suggest, it's – ridiculous."

"No, it's not." Elrohir crossed his arms across his chest and looked impatient. "I'm telling you no one has to know. Arwen can take care of the kingdom."

"And I'm telling you it's still too risky."

"Estel, listen." Elladan quieted his twin with a glance – Elrohir wasn't the most persuasive of the two, at least not towards people who didn't fear him – and looked at Aragorn almost pleadingly. "We've really been thinking – we know you can't do whatever you like because people might lose respect for you – and I can't see any risks. Or well, _risks_, but we'll be careful. You want this, don't you? You need it. I'm serious, Estel, I do think you _need_ it. If I were you, I would hate being a king."

"Then be happy you´re not. There's nothing I need I can't get here."

"Estel, if you'd only listen..."

"No, Elladan, you listen." It wasn't his intention, but the authoritative tone he otherwise spared for court slipped into his voice. Elladan stiffened. "I don't even know why I'm discussing this with you, because the answer is no and it won't change. I understand you want me to come with you and I admit it could have been fun, but it's nothing I _need_, and it's certainly nothing I've been longing for. I am perfectly happy, Dan. Perfectly happy."

Elladan looked at him defiantly, apparently not believing him. Aragorn looked back. Not until Elladan looked away did Aragorn turn his gaze to Elrohir.

With a start he realised Elladan had been the first to look away. He couldn't remember that ever happening before.

"I still don't understand why not," Elrohir said.

"You don't have to," Aragorn replied. He did not mean to sound so cold, but he could not help it. "Let's just forget it, shall we? I suggest we go inside. It's getting cold. Unless you want to leave, of course."

"I guess Arwen will want to see us," Elrohir mumbled and looked away.

"I'm sure she will." _And I wanted to see you too,_ _only not in this way_. "Shall we go inside? Your rooms should be quite ready for you, if you want to change."

"We left our packs at the Singing Swan," Elrohir said. "We thought we might pass it on our way out of the City."

"If you're going back to fetch them, I'll wait for you inside. If that's fine with you."

The twins nodded. They didn't seem to know whether he was happy to see them or if they had been dismissed, and frankly, Aragorn wasn't sure himself. After a few awkward moments that felt like hours, Elladan said, "well, we better go then," and they left, climbing over the wall and down the tree almost soundlessly, like the shadows they seemed to Aragorn. _That tree should be better guarded_, he thought, and in the next second hated himself for thinking like that. It wasn't the twins he was angry with, not really. It wasn't them he hated.

It wasn't the memories either. It was the way they tore his stupid heart to pieces.

Aragorn didn't go inside. Instead he found himself leaning against the wall, looking over it, searching the dark alleys for a sight of his brothers. He followed them with his eyes, unable to let go as if he feared they wouldn't come back. Then, suddenly exhausted, he folded his arms on the cold stone wall and rested his head on them, wishing he could have banished the memories as easily as he could close his eyes and banish the light of early dawn appearing in the eastern sky. He wished there had been no memories. Wished what he had told Elladan, those grand words about perfect happiness, had been at least a little bit true.

No. What he truly wished for was that the memories weren't only memories.

It was as impossible as he had told the twins, as impossible as he had told himself so many times before he accepted – or thought he accepted – his new life. He couldn't risk the respect that people held for him, he couldn't risk being seen on the roads like a beggar, he couldn't risk leaving his kingdom without being able to even send messages or couriers to Arwen while he was gone, and perhaps most of all, he couldn't risk death. If he died there would be chaos. It wasn't boastful to say that because he wished it wasn't true, but it was true: Gondor wouldn't survive losing its king again.

Truth was he would dearly like to leave the City with his brothers. There were some things about court life he couldn't stand. He, who had been accustomed to weeks and months alone in the wilderness, seldom found himself alone in the palace. He, who had been accustomed to go wherever he wanted, do what he wanted and say – and not say – what he wanted, was tangled in a net of traditions and formality, of custom, of propriety, of what was fitting for a king and what was not. There was always someone calling for his attention. Always something wrong in the kingdom.

He longed to, for once, make a journey without hundreds of servants and soldiers and counsellors demanding his attention every second. He longed to be Strider again, if only for a short time. The twins wanted him to run away like a child who was angry with his parents.

But he was no child. He had a responsibility. Sometimes he was certain that the fate of all of Middle Earth, or at the very least the peace they had fought so hard for, rested on his shoulders. And yet he couldn't shake his longing off as he had done so many times before...

"It shouldn't be that hard," he said out loud. "I was born a king."

Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice answered:

_But you became Strider._

* * *

TBC

What do you think? Should I go on? Thrash it? Hide somewhere in the woods and never show my face again? Please review!

Thanks for reading!


	2. The Coming of Spring

I apologize for the extremely late update, and for the confusion this is going to cause, because here's **chapter two version 2.0**. It has changed so much you won't recognize it if you read the "last" chapter two, Omen. I'm hoping that will make it easier to forget everything that happened in that chapter, because that's what I ask you to do.

Anyway - I'm a lot happier with this chapter than with Omen, and most important of all, it works much better with the rest of the plot. A huge thanks to those of you who read and reviewed Omen, I am so sorry for causing trouble, but it's better this way, promise!

Another huge thanks to my beta Atiaran, who has helped me incredibly much by being nitpicky about the grammar and making sure I don't write things twice if I can write them once.

Disclaimer: Nothing's mine.

* * *

**The Coming of Spring**

_Course will we to our best live to up your expectations._

Aragorn frowned. That made no sense.

_Of we will course do best our to up live your expectations._

The words danced in front of his eyes like the ripples of a busy water surface. He shook his head to force them to stay in order.

_We of do best will course to live your up expectations._

If only he had something to smack himself in the forehead with - surely it would make everything better. Aragorn looked around for the paperweight of solid gold, but decided it might be a bit of an overkill. Sighing loudly he returned to the letter.

_Best of we will do our to live to up of expectations your course._

"Maybe it is time for a break," Faramir suggested as Aragorn reached for the paperweight. "We've been sitting here since breakfast."

Aragorn glared at him as if he had suggested Aragorn was too weak to go on with the paperwork. Calm as ever, Faramir simply nodded at the window. Aragorn looked out. The sun had not yet reached over the top of the willow in the garden outside, its sharp glare still hiding behind the naked branches, and even though they _had_ been sitting there since breakfast, it was still only a few hours. Still, a break was better than a paperweight in the head. Aragorn sighed, folded the letter together, pushed back his chair and rose.

And that was when the room simply tipped to its side, like a boat on a stormy sea. Aragorn lost his balance. Everything - the walls with their colourful tapestries and paintings, the floor with its elaborately woven carpet, the desk, the bookshelves, Faramir - everything was spinning. He tried to regain his footing, flung out his arms after something to steady him, but there was nothing solid to hold on to; briefly he felt Faramir's hand around his arm...

...and then he was lying on his back on the floor. _I fainted_, he realised, but he had no time to wonder why, or what was going to happen now. Darkness took him, pressed him so deep into himself he forgot how to think.

He did not mind, because it felt much better that way.

* * *

Spring was on its way. Water was dripping from the trees in the garden. The snow was slowly melting away in brown trickles. And when Aragorn woke up, several hours after he collapsed in his study, a swallow sat on the windowsill and watched him with shiny black eyes. He looked back until it flew away, silhouetted against the red glow of the afternoon sun.

It was two weeks since the twins had come. One week and five days since they left. He felt as though he had been falling ever since then.

"Your Majesty?"

The voice seemed to come from somewhere far away. It was soft as snowfall, but still loud enough to pound on his ears. Aragorn struggled to find his voice and croaked:

"Faramir?"

Someone moved a little to his right. Aragorn did not dare to turn his head and look around, fearing the room would start spinning if he did, and all he saw in the corner of his eye was shadows.

"Prince Faramir is not here, your majesty," the soft voice replied. It must be Master Ninquon, the healer. Aragorn had always liked him. "It's good to see you're awake. How do you feel?"

"Where am I?"

"In the Houses of Healing, my lord."

"The Houses of Healing?" Why had they taken him out of the citadel when the royal apartments were so much closer?

When he felt well enough to look around he saw the vaulted ceiling, lit by orange shafts of afternoon light, rows of empty beds, a closed door, and at the opposite end of the room, a fireplace where Master Ninquon sat on a stool in front of the glowing embers. It was quiet, almost tranquil. But he remembered chaos.

Very vaguely he had been aware of people shouting through a closed door, and hurried voices closer to him talking in whispers. Then, as he had stumbled out of the study with Faramir at his side, there had been people staring at him, doors slamming, someone calling out... And like something out of a dream he remembered walking again, this time barely aware of anything around him but Faramir, who steadied him - and Arwen, the only thing that felt safe and solid. He had followed her voice through the thick mist inside his head. And through darkness.

Later he learned that they had taken him out of the citadel through a secret, underground passage, an escape route for the royal family, because he would never have been left alone in the royal apartments. For the King to faint in the middle of the day was no trifling matter; rumour spread quickly, the people of the citadel were in shock, and they all wanted to see him - either because they wanted something to tell their neighbours, or because they thought they would gain something from showing him concern. But no one was let into the Houses of Healing without the healer's permission and the servants working there were not the kind who gossiped. Arwen, brilliant as ever, had understood that was what he needed. Privacy.

The afternoon light was reflected in a pair of round glasses as Master Ninquon turned to him again.

"Can I do something for you, my lord? How do you feel?"

"I'm fine."

"Fine," Master Ninquon replied with a smile. "A warrior like you would never admit anything else, would you?"

"It's not like I've been dying."

"Ah, no." Master Ninquon shook his head. "No. And I think you're right not to be worried, Your Majesty. The Queen tells me you haven't slept very well lately? That was probably why you fainted."

Aragorn nodded, still too tired to give any details, and not willing to do that anyway. The healer seemed to understand - that was one of the good things with master Ninquon - because he turned towards the fire again without asking anything more.

Aragorn lay for a while and stared at the intricate pattern of shadows and ribvaults and fine fissures in the white ceiling. Was there really nothing to be worried about? A thought was taking form in his mind, but he was a bit too tired to understand it yet, so he let it float around in his head while it defined itself. It had something to do with this feeling of emptiness inside him.

_You haven't slept very well lately._ Ah, no - Master Ninquon was right. And wrong. Aragorn had barely slept at all. That, too, had something to do with that emptiness.

It had first appeared when the twins left. Aragorn remembered it as clearly as when a lightning etches the image of a brief moment into the back of one's eyelids. He had stood in Elladan's room in the guest apartments and stared at an empty bed, at a pile of neatly folded linen on top of the coverlet, at the wall with no weapons leaning against it and the chair with no cloak hanging over its back. Aragorn had only come to ask why the twins had not turned up for breakfast, but as he stood there it was as though the pieces fell in place inside his head. And then he backed out of the apartments and set off running, because the emptiness that filled him was so overwhelming he had to do something to keep his mind from it.

He never stopped to look for tracks; he knew which route the twins had taken. Aragorn imagined they had been up very early, maybe when it was still dark, but when they sneaked down to the Queen's Garden he had been there, as he always was at that time. Maybe they had hidden behind the azalea or on the verandah, and if he had looked closer he could have seen them and stopped them. When he left the garden the sun had risen well above the eastern mountains and he had gone straight to the dining room in the royal apartments where Arwen was already eating breakfast. That must have been when the twins climbed over the wall and down the tree.

"Ahem... your majesty?"

Aragorn would have jumped, if he had not been so tired. Master Ninquon was standing in the doorway. Aragorn had not heard when he left the room.

"Yes?"

"Counsellor Idhren just sent a page down here. He wants to know if you're awake."

Aragorn groaned. "I am not awake."

"I thought so," Master Ninquon smiled. "I'm afraid counsellor Idhren thought so too, because the page wanted me to insist. He said it was very important."

Aragorn snorted. Nothing was ever important when it came from Idhren. "Tell him I'm dead."

Master Ninquon laughed a little. "I can tell him you are severely ill and must not be disturbed. I'm the healer, so he cannot exactly ignore me."

"Say I've got the plague. Then he won't bother me again."

Counsellor Idhren was one thing - it would have been unlike him to be tactful enough to let a severely ill person be when he wanted to talk to him - but Aragorn was quite sure that not many others would bother to walk all the way down to the sixth level and the Houses of Healing, and maybe they had enough respect for the king to not disturb him as long as he was there. The royal apartments were private, in theory, but the King had to attend to any matter of importance; whenever someone approached him with any issue, no matter how trivial, Aragorn felt it was his duty to grant them an audience. Maybe here he would be able to think - and he instinctively knew he needed to think. He needed to know why he had collapsed - because he had done it for a reason. It had to do something with the twins. And maybe with everything that had happened in these past months.

Because it had not started with the twins, had it? Aragorn had lost count of the days - he did not have the strength to keep track of them - but he did know that he had been miserable weeks before Elladan and Elrohir came. Their visit had made things worse.

Aragorn pushed himself up until he sat upright, and reached for the cup of cold water he had spotted on his nightstand. He could not drink more than half of it. But it did clear his head. That thought was getting closer, and he sensed it was something uncomfortable.

Again he thought about the morning when the twins left. He had run after them, climbed down the tree faster than he would ever have thought was possible. Or sensible, for that matter. Then he had stood on a street edged with chestnut trees and stared at the barely visible imprints of elven feet in the snow, leading away and down the main street. Somehow he had known it was too late to catch up with them - or maybe he just knew it would not matter. They had made up their minds, and so had he. They would go. He would stay. But he felt as if he had lost something important.

"This is great," he had said, his voice small in the silence of the falling snow. "Great. They're gone. They've left. That's fine."

So why did he feel so empty?

Somehow imagining them out on the roads, free, was even more painful than hearing them talking about it. It had been one thing to turn down their offer when the possibility was still within his reach. It was another thing to realise he had actually lost it.

A day and a night - that was how long Elladan and Elrohir had stayed in Minas Tirith before they set off again. To the south, they had said, though not for very long; then they would turn back to the north, to lands they knew and loved. Truth to be told Aragorn should have known they would leave that night - he had seen the signs before, and he knew how to read them. The evening before the twins had mentioned more than once that they would not stay for very long, that they had things to do and places to see, and if Aragorn had remembered the days he lived in Imladris, he would have known what that meant. Long ago it had been a sort of code. Both the twins Aragorn had come and gone so often there would have been more farewells than anyone could stand, and so they often left in the middle of the night. But not without a word. The evening before they would talk about leaving, without saying when, but meaning they would do it tonight; it had started out as something unconscious, and turned into a sort of ritual. It was a way of saying: I will be gone when you wake up, just so you know, but let's not talk about it.

But Aragorn had forgotten that.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and rose slowly, leaning to the bedpost. Suddenly he felt restless. All these weeks and months that had passed without him doing anything! He was not usually the kind of man who sat still and waited for something to happen: if he had been that kind of man, he would not be king of Gondor. There was nothing as frustrating as not knowing what to do. But these past months, he had done nothing.

And now? Now he did not know what to do.

Just then, the thought that had been forming inside his head became suddenly clear. _Look at you_, it said. _First you faint, then you sleep for hours in the middle of the day. You cannot go on like this anymore. If you have been falling, then you have reached them bottom now. From here you have to go on in another way. You have to solve this._

Aragorn took a deep breath and nodded to himself. Then he walked across the room, trying the strength of his legs, and stood a moment by one of the windows and looked out. The sun was sinking behind Mount Mindolluin, leaving behind a velvet blue sky and the first pale stars. Shadow was creeping out of the corners of the room. The garden outside was already white and sparkling with frost.

If the twins had come back, would he have followed them? As he stood in the darkening Houses of Healing with his forehead against the cold window-glass, he doubted it. He had never regretted his decision - he had only hated that he had to make it. Maybe he wanted someone to come and force him to change his mind.

And now?

Aragorn wrapped his arms around his lean body. He was still dressed in the velvet tunic and trousers he had worn that morning, but someone had taken off his shoes and the long, woolen cloak, and the citadel was cold in winter. He felt lonely, abandoned. Empty.

Tired.

He watched his breath as it steamed the glass up, so that the view of the garden outside faded into a dark blur, with the last red rays of sunlight shimmering between the velvet blue that was the sky and the pitch black mass that was Mount Mindolluin. He closed his eyes and wondered if he would be able to sleep tonight. He wanted it more than anything else in the world.

He had to do something, but he had no idea what. And he feared it would be too painful or too difficult for him to even try.

* * *

Despite everything else, Aragorn did sleep. He woke up once while the room was still dark, to see Arwen slumped in a chair beside him, moonlight glowing in her hair, eyes half closed with exhaustion. Aragorn smiled to himself, rolled over to the side and fell asleep again.

The next morning he told Master Ninquon he felt well enough to leave the Houses of Healing, maybe after breakfast. Arwen looked much more tired than he was. Aragorn knew, from his own experience, that nights watching by somebody's bedside seldom gave very much sleep. Another thing to add to the list of things he owed her. But he would tell her everything, as soon as he had worked up enough courage.

They woke up almost at the same time, when the morning sun lit up the garden outside and trickled into the room. The day promised to be even more splendid than the one before - all the snow had fallen off the trees, and water rose from the ground in a thin shimmering haze - and Master Ninquon personally brought them breakfast on the verandah.

"But I would not mind if you stayed another day," he said, sounding as though it wasn't important at him at all, but with a sideways glance at Aragorn to see his reaction. "Just in case."

"Thank you, Ninquon, but I don't believe that's necessary," Aragorn said, blinking towards the sun. He was curled up in a chair with what felt like a dozen blankets - it was still very cold - but the sun felt warm on his face. "How are the rumours going? Do the townspeople know what happened yet?"

The healer hesitated, then decided to let the subject of Aragorn's convalescence drop. "There are a lot of theories. One of my assistants visited a woman in the fourth level, and she told him she had heard you were dying."

"That I was _dying_?"

Arwen choked on her tea, laughing too hard to swallow.

"Goodness," Aragorn sighed, rubbing her back, "and rumours have a tendency to get worse, haven't they? By lunch today they'll think I was assassinated."

"And in the afternoon that you were eaten by demons," master Ninquon smiled.

"And not long after that," Arwen said as soon as she could breathe properly again, "Sauron has returned."

The name made the three of them a bit startled and they fell silent, then laughed it away. Arwen put her teacup down and said: "Seriously spoken, I don't think it will be that bad. It seems to me the townspeople has more common sense than those of the citadel. Like counsellor Idhren. I don't know what he wanted to achieve with fawning over you like that yesterday, but it must have been something."

"You don't say," Aragorn replied with a wry smile. "I wonder when he'll be around again. Don't let him in when he is, Ninquon."

"I don't know if he dares to come," Arwen said, with the sort of mischievous smile that made her eyes glow. "Éowyn told him off yesterday because he wouldn't leave anyone alone - he kept following after Faramir. You know how she is when she is angry. Idhren looked like he thought she'd kill him."

And counsellor Idhren actually stayed away for the rest of that day. Instead lord Cambeleg, who lived at the citadel in periods while trying to marry off his children with some of the other young nobles living there, sent no less than three pages down to the Houses of Healing with the message that he desired to meet the King. Aragorn denied them all, and he did not go back to the citadel.

He felt well, but if he went back, people would expect him to pay them as much attention as he would do otherwise. Aragorn was seldom heaped with work, especially not in winter - sometimes he had to arrange for inspections of the citadel's supplies, or for a pack of hungry wolves to be dealt with, or see to the upkeep of the roads, but that was all. But then there were emissaries from Esgaroth, Harad or Rohan who who came with greetings from their kings, greetings that took several hours to say and included at least three audiences; merchants who wanted to negotiate a few coin's advantage to prices that had been settled years ago; noblemen who wanted him to solve their petty squabbles, or who lived at the citadel for a couple of months or a year and wanted nothing else than gain influence - all stupid, unimportant things that took far too much of his time. If King Elessar was well enough to go through the cloth supplies with master Tawarbênn, then he must be well enough to dine with lord Rafthir and his wife while they tried to marry off their newborn daughter to his surely-soon-to-come son.

So instead he stayed where he was, content to sit on the verandah and watch winter drip and trickle and melt away beneath the mild fingers of the spring sun. The healers did not ask when he was going to leave, and Aragorn did not mention it. It was the first time in months he'd had time simply to rest. If only he could figure out how to heal his deeper wounds.

* * *

Aragorn spent two more days behind the white stone walls of the Houses of Healing. On the third morning, cold but sunny with very little wind, a servant knocked shyly on the frame of the open door and said that a horse had arrived with two riders.

"Master Ninquon told me to tell your majesty they want to see you," she said. "I don't know who they are, though."

Aragorn, who had just finished his breakfast and was about to get dressed, lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "I think I know," he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth."You can let them inside. No, wait - I'll go and meet them."

That Legolas and Gimli should arrive sooner or later was maybe something he could have foreseen. In winter, when nothing interesting at all happened, news spread quickly - the king's collapse would naturally be the subject of discussion among travellers in taverns and roadside inns all over Gondor, and those that heard the tales were always helpful when it came to spreading and improving them. Both Legolas and Gimli were intelligent enough to realise that no, Aragorn had most probably not been attacked by a dragon on the courtyard outside the citadel. But, as Gimli said: "When we heard from Emyn Arnen that you were sick, we decided there might be some grain of truth in all the lies." Emyn Arnen was where Faramir and Éowyn lived when they were not in Minas Tirith, and the place where men lived nearest the elvish settlement. Apart from the occasional traveler (either lost or unusually brave) Legolas and his elves got almost all their news from there.

Aragorn met his friends just outside the door to the Houses of Healing, where Gimli impatiently waited while Legolas gave instructions to a stableboy about how to take proper care of his beloved Arod. A thin layer of snow covered the street, though where the sun warmed it it was already melting; winter was as reluctant to let go of Gondor as Legolas was to let go of his horse. When Aragorn saw them, their breath coming as white puffs and their faces blushing from the cold, his smile broadened. At least their friendship had not changed when almost everything else had.

When Legolas caught sight of Aragorn, his eyes narrowed.

"Gimli," he said gravely, "am I wrong, or is that Aragorn?"

Gimli lifted an eyebrow. "Yes, Legolas, that seems to be Aragorn."

"Then why is he in the Houses of Healing but not drugged, tied up or too badly wounded to actually move?"

At this Aragorn burst out laughing, walked over the wet snow and hugged the elf tightly.

"I will explain," he promised. "As soon as we have gotten inside. Would you like to eat something? Do you need to rest?"

"_Do you need to rest?_" Legolas repeated, as if it were the most ridiculous question he had ever heard. "What do you think we are, Men? If anyone here needs to rest, it should be you." Now he eyed Aragorn with a slightly anxious expression. "You do look a bit tired."

"I've been worse."

"We were a bit worried," Gimli said, when Aragorn knelt down to embrace him. "And when we came to the citadel and were told you were here we were even more worried. You'd better have a good explanation."

"A very good explanation," Legolas agreed.

"I have one," Aragorn said, "and if you two keep quiet for a moment I may even have time to share it."

Together they went back inside and sat down on the verandah where Aragorn had spent his days in the Houses of Healing, covered in blankets. A few white clouds were slowly sailing over the sky along with the swallows, and the day before the hedges that grew by the wall had grown their first leaves. Aragorn fidgeted as if the wooden stair where they sat was not comfortable enough, but truth was the feeling of spring made him even more restless. Everything inside him told him that it was time to leave. Spring was a time for long journeys.

"I fainted," he said, "because I had not slept enough. And then I stayed here because I wanted some privacy. It's not a sign of weakness, Legolas, I rather think it's a sign of maturity."

"I have never said it's a sign of weakness."

"No, but you wanted to. There's not much more I can say than that. It wasn't anything serious."

"And why hadn't you been sleeping?"

Aragorn shrugged. That was not exactly like saying he did not know, so it was not exactly a lie. Legolas looked at him in a way that clearly said he would not let the subject go that easily.

Aragorn looked away. He watched a fly - one of the first - crawling over the floorboards. He hesitated.

"I can't explain," he said, and knew that his friends would be even more intrigued by that reply. But it was true - he did not know how to put words to it. And Arwen deserved to hear it first when he did.

"It's all I can say. I don't know how to explain. Actually I don't want to talk about it, it's... nothing important."

To his surprise they let him get away with that. Gimli started to talk about how he had only recently come down to Ithilien after spending the winter with his family, and Legolas told Aragorn about the settlement that was now almost finished. Aragorn let them speak, nodding here and there, adding "yes" and "indeed" and "that's so like you, elfling" where it fit. It was pleasant - only when they said something about traveling or the north or the wilderness did he flinch, and never so much they saw it.

He had planned to leave the Houses of Healing that day - but quietly, without any commotion surrounding his return to the citadel. So in the afternoon Gimli and Legolas followed him along the same way he had taken on the day he collapsed, into a narrow alley on the sixth level where there was a hidden door in the wall. It was Elrohir who had found it in the summer following Aragorn's coronation. The twins, along with Legolas and Aragorn, and with some assistance from Gimli, Éowyn, Faramir and Arwen, had made a sport out of finding every hidden passage and room in the citadel. Elladan had won, with two passages, one room (more of a cupboard, Elrohir muttered) and no less than four small compartments in Aragorn's desk. How long ago that felt, Aragorn thought as he led the way through the door, into a tunnel where a set of dusty steps led upwards into darkness. Even Arwen, usually so mature, had joined the game with eager enthusiasm; and Legolas had forgotten his dislike for small spaces when he found a room full of dusty old Dorwinion bottles. Why did they never do such things anymore?

The tunnel led to a rarely used corridor on the first floor of the citadel. Then came the risky part: they had to walk across half that floor to get to another tunnel, behind a tapestry close to the kitchen, because the passages had been built so that no one could get to the royal apartments from the city without the risk of being. The tree by the wall had been an easier way, but even if Aragorn had managed to climb it, Gimli would never make it.

Miraculously they weren't seen. The second tunnel took them from the first floor to the royal apartments on the fourth, and ended just outside Aragorn and Arwen's bedchamber. Arwen met them there. The servants knew Aragorn was coming, but neither counsellor Idhren nor lord Cambeleg nor lord Rafthir knew it yet. Aragorn looked forward to seeing their faces when he appeared in the dining hall in a couple of hours.

"So," Arwen said softly, as Legolas and Gimli left to make sure their saddlebags had been properly delivered to the guest apartments, "what are you going to do about it?"

"About what?"

She sighed. "You know what I'm talking about."

"Ah. Um... you know, spring's here, and I've had time to rest. I think I will be much better."

Arwen looked as though she doubted it, and Aragorn wondered, not for the first time, exactly how much she had understood. She knew for how long he had had trouble sleeping, but did she also know how often his eyes wandered off to gaze at the horizon when he did not think about it? Did she somehow know that his heart leaped every time he heard someone mentioning a journey? Had she noted that he avoided talking about the old days, just like Legolas avoided talking about the Sea?

That last thought made the hair at the back of his neck rise - of excitement, not fear. Legolas and his Sea-longing. If anyone would understand how Aragorn felt, it must be him.

"Aragorn?"

He had been so lost in thoughts he had completely forgotten he had been talking to Arwen. She was looking at him with an amused smile.

"Where were you?"

He smiled back. "In front of a warm fire, drinking tea. It must be time for that now, isn't it?"

"Maybe." Arwen took him by the elbow. "You'd better watch yourself, Estel, you're almost as addicted to tea as you are to those blasted leaves."

It was not until the evening that Aragorn got a chance to talk to Legolas in private. Arwen and Gimli were engaged in a game of cards while Faramir helped Éowyn write a letter to her brother - she did not have the patience to write anything longer than three sentences herself.

"Let's go for a walk," Aragorn said, and Legolas followed him out of the royal apartments. They walked down a long corridor and came to a balcony that faced north. Aragorn leaned against the railing and looked out over the City with its points of light in the darkness, the misty field beyond, glittering with snow in the faint light of the low moon.

"I need to talk to you," he said.

Legolas swung his long legs over the railing so he could sit on it with his feet dangling over the courtyard far below. "I thought so."

"Do you still long for the Sea? I mean, really long for it - so much it feels like you will be torn apart?"

Legolas bit his lip and nodded solemnly. "Every minute of the day."

"I feel so too," Aragorn said. "But for the wilderness. Or the north. I'm not quite sure which."

"For the north?"

"I want to be Strider again," Aragorn said. "I want to be a ranger. The north was my home. I want to be there again."

"Go back then."

"Don't be foolish. I can't."

There was silence for a moment. Aragorn glanced at Legolas. Despite what the elf had said, when Aragorn looked at him he did not see an elf torn apart by longing, but someone who was strong and at peace. He may have the sea-longing, but he also had something that Aragorn lacked: someone to be. Aragorn had been forced into a role. Legolas had found it and embraced it whole-heartedly.

"Elladan and Elrohir passed through Ithilien a week ago," Legolas said. W

"They said they had wanted you to come with them on a journey, but you didn't want to," Legolas went on. "And now you say you want to. What's that supposed to mean?"

"I said I can't. I want to, but I can't."

"Why not?"

"Why didn't you go with them?" Aragorn shot back. The discussion had taken a turn he did not like. He had wanted to ask Legolas how he could be so peaceful while still longing for the Sea, not be confronted with the same questions the twins had asked.

"I was waiting for Gimli," Legolas replied. "It would have been so easy to miss him out on the road, in case he took another way. But Gimli and I talked about going after them. They promised to camp somewhere near Eilenach Beacon, in Anorien, in a week or two."

"That's a strange place to camp," Aragorn said. It was not very far from Minas Tirith.

"I don't know," Legolas said and shrugged. "Maybe they're waiting for someone else to meet them there. Someone else beside Gimli and me."

Aragorn groaned. So they had not given up after all.

In the last few days he had understood something important about himself. His feelings had changed since the night he met the twins in the Queen's Garden. That night his head had told him not to go with them while his heart begged him to do it; now his head told him to go, because he would feel better, because there was no other way to be happy, because he could not deny himself that forever. But there was another part of him that was scared - maybe a very small part of him that had wanted to stay in Imladris and live a safe and comfortable life, when the rest of him wanted adventures and dangers and fame.

"What I wanted to ask you," he said, "is how you manage to be so... normal. You don't have trouble sleeping, or anything..."

"Sometimes."

"But not always," Aragorn said, and waited until Legolas had nodded before he went on: "How comes it you make it perfectly fine, and I don't? Aren't elves supposed to be more emotional than men?"

"More emotional does not mean weaker."

"I didn't say that. I just don't understand... what do you do that I don't?"

Legolas sighed, shifted position on the railing and pulled one knee to his chest. "I don't talk about the Sea. I try not to think of it. I try not to dream of it. I don't go close to it."

"But I do the same with the north, and the rangers. It doesn't help."

"Well, we're not Elrohir and Elladan - we're different. I suppose you have to do something else."

"Like what?"

Legolas sighed again. "Aren't you old enough to take care of yourself by now?"

"Apparently," Aragorn muttered, "I am not."

Legolas swung both his legs back over the railing so that he faced Aragorn. "If you can't travel like a ranger, maybe you can travel like a king. With servants and soldiers and all that. I would never do it by myself, but I guess I can stand it if you want it. We could go north, perhaps to Arnor. I haven't been there since last summer."

"If what I have heard is right we don't want to be there at any other time than summer - it's supposed to be blasted cold. But maybe we wouldn't even have to go north. Maybe I just need to leave the City."

"You think it's a good idea then?"

"You know me well enough. If you think it would help me..."

Legolas shook his head. "I have no idea, Estel. To me it sounds like a ridiculous idea. If you travel the way a king does you'll bring half the citadel with you anyway. I just can't think of anything else."

Aragorn looked over the railing again. The evening wind had turned. It brought the smells of his homeland, of wilderness and winter, across the southern fields where spring was coming. Anything that could take him there must be a good thing.

He smiled. "No, Legolas, I don't think it's ridiculous. You are right. We will travel, and we will do it like kings."

* * *

**TBC**

Thank you for reading! What did you think? Good? bad? Please review!


	3. The Gathering of the Clouds

Disclaimer: I was going to be funny and say that if I owned Middle Earth the books would be so much happier and not a single person would get hurt, but judging but this little story here that might not be the case. I don't own it, anyway.

Thanks again to my beta Atiaran. I don't dare to say this story is any good but she makes it so much better!

Oh, and thanks to everyone who has reviewed - special thanks to Alameda who wasn't signed it, because I can't reply and say thank you^^ I really, really, really appreciate it! :)

* * *

**The gathering of the clouds**

Roheryn looked a little abandoned. Aragorn had not ridden him for ages.

"You must have thought I had forgotten about you," he said as he climbed over the fence, landing with a soft squishing sound on a patch of bare earth on the other side. Roheryn kept his distance and looked insulted. He always knew when to be angry.

"You'll have to forgive me," Aragorn said, digging into his pockets for a handful of oats. "Truth is I had forgotten. A little." He held out the oats. "I had so much else on my mind."

The meager spring grass must have lost its first charm. Roheryn hesitated, yielded, and came closer. He ate from Aragorn's hand as quickly as a hungry hobbit child. Then he stood still and let himself be stroked on his spotted neck.

They stood there, hooves and brocade shoes sinking into the damp earth. Aragorn let their heads touch, Roheryn's silky forehead to his own.

"We'll ride again soon", he whispered, his heart fluttering a little at the thought. "We'll ride again, you and I."

Roheryn snorted as if he understood. Or maybe he just wanted more oats.

Aragorn looked up and let his gaze wander over the pasture. Arwen's dark Dae and Faramir's Bronind were grazing in the middle of it. Arod and Éowyn's Fréonda, both slightly dwarfed by the other two, stood side by side, tails swishing as they helped each other chase off some drowsy spring flies. All the other horses of the citadel had been taken to the stables or the courtyard beyond it to be prepared for the journey.

Aragorn absently fingered the green stone that clasped his cloak together. A gust of wind stroked his cheek, rustled in the grass, and stirred cords in his heart that he had not allowed to be touched for a very long time. For a moment he thought the wind called his name: _Strider..._

"The wind's from the north today, isn't it?"

Aragorn looked up to see Éowyn leaning over the fence, watching him over the edge of her fur-lined collar.

He nodded. "We'll have a cold journey."

"Sunny but cold."

"That doesn't sound too bad."

Éowyn shook her head, reaching over the fence to scratch Fréonda behind the ears as the grey mare trotted over to her. The sun was gleaming in her pale hair, puddles of water and patches of snow glittered around her feet and her dress and cloak were muddy at the hem. Already she had a couple of new freckles. The citadel was startingly white behind her, newly washed in a nightly rain.

From the other side of the stables behind her, came the sounds of the royal retinue getting ready - the stomping of hooves, the bellow of oxen, the jingle of tack, the occasional squeaking of a wagon's wheel and the voices of men and women calling to each other, giving orders, laughing, jesting, cursing the cold. The soldiers were saddling their horses, the servants were loading wagons with food and blankets and spare arrows. The white puffs of breath from the horses, the smell of wet wool, wet fur and sweat, and the lingering sharpness of winter filled the air.

"We will be slow," Éowyn said wistfully. "I would have liked to travel swiftly. I would have liked to ride alone, with you and Faramir and Gimli and the elves. Why do we need all those servants and soldiers again?"

"It's appropriate", Aragorn said, for what felt like the thousandth time. Last evening, when Legolas and he had returned from the balcony and told the others of their new plans, he had had to explain to them over and over again why they had to undertake the kind of journey he proposed.

Éowyn sighed. "It still seems unnecessary."

She was restless, just like him, and like him she could not just ride out on a whim. He was a king, she was a woman. Their situations were alike.

"We won't be that slow," he said.

"Yes, we will."

"Come." Aragorn gave Roheryn the last handful of oats and patted him goodbye for the moment. "Let's go and see how the preparations are faring. Have the others eaten breakfast?"

"Not when I left."

They walked between the two stable houses and onto the courtyard on the sixth level, between the citadel rock and the outer wall. The retinue had gathered here because there was no way to get wagons and horses through the tunnel in the rock to the courtyard in front of the citadel itself. Aragorn did not mind an excuse to get out. This was a sort of haven - so bustling with activity he could pass almost unnoticed through the crowd.

All around them, soldiers were leading saddled horses out of the stables, blinking in the sudden sunlight; a couple of kitchen maids struggled with lifting a barrel of ale onto one of the wagons; the two carpenters were arguing about the number of hammers they would bring; the chirurgeon was giving instructions about his many fragile instruments as a man carried his wooden chest towards the wagons; the blacksmith made some last-minute repairs to horse's shoes and broken cauldrons, and a scullery maid slowly turned a grindstone while the weapons master sharpened swords and knives for a long row of soldiers.

"What do you think?" Aragorn said. "Will we be ready to leave in an hour?"

"Less," Éowyn said, smiling. "Half an hour."

"Not if Gimli and Legolas start arguing about something."

"Or if Faramir remembers some letter he must write." Éowyn stopped outside the armory. "My sword needs to be sharpened. Maybe I should have it seen to before we leave."

"I hardly think you will need it on the journey."

"Maybe not," she said, looking a bit secretive. "And maybe I will."

"What?"

Éowyn shrugged and gave him a mischiveous smile. "You owe me a re-match. I know I can beat you. It's just a matter of luck on your side."

"And you want your sword sharpened for that?"

She grinned, shook her head, and kept walking, zigzagging between horses, people and heaps of luggage left on the ground. The snow and the dirt on the courtyard had been trampled into mud that reached to their ankles, with the white stone visible in patches, and Aragorn wondered for the hundredth time why, of all shoes he owned, he had chosen the brocade ones. But the mud would dry, he thought, if only the clouds drifting across the sky remained this white and tiny.

Come to think of it, the clouds had been much smaller an hour ago... Aragorn looked up. More of them were gathering in the north.

"We'll have rain," he said.

"I saw that earlier." Éowyn followed his gaze and frowned. "We should leave as soon as possible, or it will be over us."

"Better wait till it has passed."

"Nay," she said and grinned, "that could take hours. I don't care if it starts raining, I just want to leave before the others realise that it will."

* * *

They left the courtyard behind, followed the street to the citadel gate, and walked through the gate into the tunnel where torches lit up the broad stairs. Five servants met them inside the tunnel with heavy loads of blankets, furs and spare cloaks. Master Tâwarbenn was with them.

"Are all of these really needed?" he asked Aragorn. "I thought you would be going south."

"We are," Aragorn said. "South to Dol Amroth, where the wind blows day and night and the damp gets into the very marrow of your bones. We'll need everything warm we have."

"What was it Imrahil called it in that letter?" Éowyn asked, as they left the darkness of the tunnel and stepped into the blinding sunlight reflected against the citadel. "The wind-whipped, wave-drenched, miserably grey and rainy coast..."

"The place the Valar forgot," Aragorn added, smiling at the memory, "the place that the swine finds too muddy and the seals too wet...I, the shivering, sniffling prince of Dol Amroth, Imrahil the Unhappy, humbly welcome you to share my despair in my damp castle by the stormy sea...The man should have become a bard."

If you looked south and strained your eyes, on a clear day like this, you could see the Sea like a thin line of cold blue. When Aragorn was younger, and lived in Gondor under the name of Thorongil, he had always loved that place. Dol Amroth was a walled city on a rock above the sea, and a stone castle defying the cold grey waves. It was cold, very cold - and very wild.

It was not like the north, but Aragorn did not want to go north - not when he risked meeting the twins there. The wilderness was huge, but a chance meeting was not impossible - it had happened to Aragorn before. The twins might make sure it happened again, and if it did, Aragorn trusted them to be stubborn enough to try to persuade him to come with them once again. He did not want that wound to be opened again. He did not want the possibility back.

Thinking of the twins waiting by the Eilenach Beacon, in Anorien on the road to Rohan, Aragorn was glad they did not go west either. Rohan would have been the perfect destination - not too far, like Eryn Galen, and not too close, like Ithilien - but Aragorn had argued heatedly against it, and in the end he had won. The one who was most reluctant to go to Dol Amroth was Legolas, because it was so close to the sea, but he had given in - maybe because he knew Aragorn would not want to pass through Anorien.

"If only Imrahil's court wasn't so similar to this," Éowyn said, as they walked up the broad steps into the shadow of the entrance hall. "I like my brother's better."

"We'll go to Rohan in the summer."

"I know. And I do want to see Lothiriel again. There's something between her and Éomer and I've got to know what. But I would have liked to get away from court."

"Well, so do I. There's nothing we can do about it."

"At least we have a long journey ahead of us."

Their feet left tracks of mud on the stone floor, and their voices echoed slightly against the arched roof high above their heads. The windows threw long squares of sunlight on the floor. Horse Master Narion hurried past with a rucksack flung over his shoulder.

Éowyn went to fetch her sword from her room and take it to the weapons master, and Aragorn went on to the royal apartments on the fourth floor. At first he thought it was empty. The only one in the hallway was Arwen's maid Maew, who was carrying Arwen's jewelry chest. Aragorn held open the door for her.

"Is Arwen here?"

"In the morning room."

The morning room was at the end of the hallway, a small airy room where Aragorn and Arwen preferred to take their breakfast, rather than in the dining hall where the rest of the citadel ate. Hushed voices came from the slightly opened door. Aragorn peered inside. Arwen and Faramir sat with their heads together, Legolas between them, Gimli watching from a chair beside the fireplace.

"Making evil plans?" Aragorn said and stepped into the room. All four of them straightened up and fell silent. Aragorn sat down beside Arwen and kissed her on the brow. "What were you talking about?"

"Nothing," she said. "Where have you been?"

Something about her voice sounded tense, but he decided not to ask. Maybe she was just stressed about the journey. As the Queen, she had a great deal of responsibility.

"On the sixth level. Everything's almost ready. We should go down as soon as possible."

Faramir looked startled. "We will leave this early?"

"Why wait when we can go now? It's a lovely day. Have you packed?"

Arwen hesitated. "If Maew has found a dress I can ride in... well, then I'm ready. You don't think it's better to wait till after lunch, then?"

"Why?"

She shrugged. Aragorn did not miss the glance she exchanged with Faramir, but he could not exactly read it. Surprise? Confusion?

"What's going on?" he asked. "There's something you're not telling me."

Another glance. This time Gimli looked towards the roof and scratched the back of his neck, trying to look casual. Legolas was slowly turning an empty teacup in his hand hands, his expression unreadable. But Aragorn recognized this kind of silence. It was guilt.

"Arwen," he said, frowning, "what is it you don't..."

"What is it _you're_ not telling _us_?" she shot back, twisting in her chair to look at him. "Four days ago you collapsed, for the whole winter you've been waking up in the middle of the night and leaving without a word, and I haven't been told anything - _nothing_! And now I ask Legolas why he has been so quiet all morning and he says - " Legolas looked up, bewildered, and started to protest, but Arwen raised her voice above his: "He says that you've been unhappy and that's why you're making this journey, because you want to feel like a ranger again, and Legolas is worried that it will not help..."

"Did you say that?" Aragorn asked, scowling at Legolas who refused to meet his eyes. "Why did you tell them?"

"Why would he not?" Arwen snapped. Her face was flushed with anger. All the worry and confusion and weariness of the last days - or weeks? For how long had she sensed something was wrong? - exploded in a flurry of words. "We have the right to know - I have the right to know - and don't you understand you are hurting Legolas as well? He doesn't want to go to Dol Amroth because you are being a fool!"

"I am being a fool?" Aragorn leapt from the chair. "Well, tell me what I'm supposed to do then, since you seem to know everything about me!"

"Oh, do I?" Arwen glared at him, but even as she did so her voice cracked. "What do I know about you? When did you tell me anything true last time? I don't know what you need, I don't know what you feel! I knew something was wrong but I could not see what. I don't... Valar, I don't know anything."

As her voice died away, she closed her eyes, as if that would take away the pain. Aragorn sat down again, shocked. He had never shouted at Arwen before.

"I was going to tell you," he said. "I just wanted to wait till it felt right. But if Legolas has decided he knows better than me, then so be it. What he says is true. What of it?"

Silence fell again. Aragorn looked from Legolas to Arwen, but none of them seemed to know what to say. He turned to Faramir.

"This is all a mistake," Faramir said, calm as ever. "We do not need to argue. The thing is, Aragorn, that Legolas doesn't want to torture himself by going to the Sea because of something he doesn't think will help you. He told us what he heard from you because we asked, and that was what we were discussing. We don't think this sort of journey is what you need."

Aragorn forced down the anger flaring up again, but he could not help sounding irritated as he said: "All I need is to get away from the citadel, and I can't see any other way to do that than an actual journey. I do not think I will feel like a ranger if I do that, and I do not want to be one either."

"But you want to feel like one," Legolas said.

"Possibly. But I am not a ranger and therefore I will not travel as one."

"And you think it will help?"

"Help?"

"You think it will make you sleep easier?" Legolas asked, challenge in his voice, despite the glances Faramir threw at him. "You think you will feel better?"

"It was your idea."

"I regretted it."

"What do you think, then?"

Legolas leaned closer, watching him with those piercing blue eyes. "I think that it won't matter how far you ride as long as you have the servants and soldiers and all that behind. I think it won't matter where you ride, when we will sleep at some lord's estate every night and our destination is a palace. I think you're fooling yourself."

"I am not fooling myself."

Legolas shrugged and looked away. Aragorn scowled at him. Maybe a part of him knew the elf might be right, but he was not going to admit it.

"I trusted my troubles to you and you alone," he said instead, "because I thought you would understand me best, and I trusted you not to tell anyone else. Had I known you would reveal it to the first person to ask..."

"Estel." Arwen put a hand on his arm, very lightly, as if not sure if he would allow her to touch him. Pain and guilt were written across her face. "Don't blame him. We... we pressed him to tell us. We were worried for you. And for him. It's not Legolas fault."

"And now we're quarreling again", Faramir said softly. "Look, Aragorn, we're concerned about you, but it's your choice. We cannot decide for you. We just want to help."

Aragorn pressed two fingers to his temples and sighed. Gimli was the only one who dared to look at him, and though he had not said anything, Aragorn knew he was the least guilty of them all. Gimli would have waited for Aragorn to explain when he wanted to explain, because Gimli trusted people to do that before it was too late; and if Aragorn asked for his help, he would give it without question. Somehow the dwarf's steadfast loyalty gave Aragorn new strength. Gimli would not try to judge him. Gimli would never say, _told you so_.

"Listen", he said, looking up again. "I don't want to be angry with any of you. I am certain that this journey will be fine for me, but if I'm wrong - then it will show, right? And then I'll need your help. But I will never know if I'm wrong before I have tried."

Arwen hesitated. He looked at her, pleadingly. She managed a faint smile. "You are right."

"Of course," Faramir said. "We never meant you to cancel the journey, we just wondered if you knew what you were doing."

"And I do," Aragorn assured him. "Don't you agree, Gimli?"

The dwarf shrugged. "That will be interesting to see."

"Legolas?"

Legolas sighed. "You know why I don't want to go with you. But it's no problem. If you still don't want to go to Rohan, we can go different ways."

"I'd hate to leave you behind."

"I'll be fine."

Aragorn reached over the table to put his hand over the elf's. "Maybe I'll need your help too. You cannot avoid the Sea forever, Las."

Legolas lifted an eyebrow. "If you can avoid being a ranger, why wouldn't I be able to avoid the Sea?"

Aragorn ignored that. "When are you going to accept it? You have to live with it, Las, not pretend it isn't there. One day you'll have to -"

"And that has to be tomorrow?" Legolas retorted. "Listen, Estel, it's not such a big deal. What I want is to go with the twins, and if you don't want that, why shouldn't I?"

Aragorn did not know how to answer that. He sighed. "So you've made up your mind?"

"I..." Legolas hesitated. "Not exactly. I didn't think we'd leave so soon. But I guess..."

"No," Aragorn said and squeezed his hand a little. "Don't make any decisions in a haste. You may come to regret it. Let's say - "

"Who is making decisions in a haste?"

"I am," Aragorn quickly admitted, "so listen. We'll postpone the journey and set off tomorrow. That way you've got time to think, and so have I. Maybe one of us will change our minds." He grinned. "Hopefully you."

Legolas pulled his hand away and seemed to fight with himself to not smile, but he had never been good at being angry with anyone. With the expression of someone surrendering unwillingly, he smiled back. "Most likely no one. We're both more stubborn than a dwarf demanding payment."

The empty bread basket from Gimli's side of the table came flying through the air and hit Aragorn in the head, since Legolas very quickly ducked.

"Goodness!" Faramir burst out. "Go outside if you're going to throw things, I haven't finished my breakfast."

* * *

The oxen were unharnessed from the carts, the horses unsaddled and led back into the stables, and the luggage carried back into the citadel. It was with a heavy heart Aragorn gave the orders. He stood and watched the procedure and he could almost feel Roheryn's disappointed eyes as the horse was taken back into the pasture.

Maybe Legolas felt Aragorn's disappointment, because the elf was nowhere to be seen. When Legolas felt guilty about something, he wanted to be alone.

"I still don't understand," Éowyn said and sat down on a barrel beside him, the newly sharpened sword in her hands. "If Legolas doesn't want to go to Dol Amroth, why do we wait? It's his choice."

"It's just a day," Aragorn said. He did not feel like explaining the real reason yet again. "We'll ride off on the morrow. That way we will miss the rain."

"Unless it keeps raining through the night."

"And then we will be very happy we did not set off today."

Éowyn shrugged, absently running a finger along the fine steel edge of her sword. She looked as unhappy about the delay as he felt. "I understand him, though," she mused. "Sometimes I feel it would be better to ride alone."

"You do?"

She made a face. "The retinue."

"Ah."

"I was not far from strangling one of your guards yesterday, and it won't feel better because we're not in Minas Tirith. And do you remember Imrahil's ward, whatever his name was?"

"Very clearly."

"If he keeps insisting on protecting me and Arwen wherever we go, I will kill him."

Aragorn had wanted to kill the ward too, last time he saw him. "But that's not why Legolas doesn't want to go with us."

"I know, I know - the sea," Éowyn said. "We all have our reasons. I guess I'm the only one who has a problem with servants. We didn't have that many in Edoras."

Sometimes Aragorn had the eerie feeling that she knew more than she pretended. She was so young - twenty-six this year - but much wiser than he had been in that age. He had known he was a king, but not understood it; had never grasped the meaning of it, had never felt the chains. He had still been a child. She was not.

When he left her and walked back to the citadel, the wind had lessened a little. There was no longer the sharp bite of winter in it, nor did it tear at his clothes as if it wanted him to hurry. Was it a sign - did the northern wind turn its back him because he turned his back the north?

On the way to the fourth floor he met Gimli in a very bad mood, stalking down a spiral stair with his axe in hand. The dwarf only ever walked around with his axe indoors when he was angry.

"You two," he muttered as Aragorn carefully stepped out of his way, "are the most foolish persons in the world."

"Have you been talking to Legolas?"

"I have tried."

"Has he made up his mind?"

Gimli gave a frustrated sigh. "Does that flighty creature ever make up his mind? Talk to him if you want. This is all your fault, after all."

"How is it my fault?"

But the dwarf gave no answer, and Aragorn shook his head and went on upwards. Maybe Gimli was right, maybe he should try to persuade Legolas once more. He found the elf on the floor in the guest apartments, fletching arrows.

Aragorn stopped in the doorway, silently wondering what the elf prepared for - the possibility of a leisure hunt on the road, or the dangers of the roadless north? Legolas said nothing, concentrating fully on the arrows. If he knew Aragorn watched him, he did not say it.

"Have you made up your mind?"

"You gave me till tomorrow."

Aragorn left the doorway and came to stand beside him. Legolas kept working with the arrows, his fingers swift and skilled, his brow furrowed.

"What are you leaning towards, then?"

"I'm not sure yet. Hand me my quiver?"

"Listen," Aragorn said, giving him the quiver, "I'm sorry for getting angry before. It won't be the same without you."

"And it won't be the same without you, if I go with the twins", Legolas said. "Ever thought of that?"

He hadn't. He had never considered that they might miss him.

"Tell me when you've made up your mind", Aragorn said and backed out of the apartments. "I will be outside."

He shut the door close behind him, leaned his back to it and swallowed hard, because something had stuck in his throat. Then he began to walk, faster and faster, aimlessly. The realisation that had come with Legolas's words - said without the purpose of making him understand, said even without the knowledge that there was something to be understood - made his thoughts run in circles.

The very tragedy of everything that had changed was overwhelming. Aragorn had never understood that he was important to the twins' life - to them, yes, but not to their way of living. But the truth was that without him, the twins would never have their old life back; it was as lost to them as it was to him.

Aragorn passed Gimli in the entrance hall and did not notice him. Suddenly he saw exactly how devastating the peace had been, not only for him but also for many of his beloved ones. They were broken; shattered by a peace they had not been prepared for. They were foreign, a relic of old times. In that instant he knew why the elves were sailing. They had known and loved another Middle Earth, not this one.

He left the citadel; walked through the tunnel, past the Houses of Healing, past the inn of the Singing Swan, to the street edged with chestnut trees where snow still covered the cobbles. Sunlight shone through spidery branches. Only the faintest touch of cold was left of the nothern wind.

Still Aragorn shuddered, and tugged the cloak closer to his body.

_Tomorrow_, he thought, and looked down the street as it wound its way through the White City, all the way down to the last gate. All he wanted now was to get out. He did not want to know how difficult everything was. He was on his own; if he could make it, so could the twins.

_Tomorrow._

* * *

So sorry for all the angst-.- Aragorn, Y U SO STUPID?

Thanks for reading, please review! :)


	4. The Breaking of the Storm

Hope you all had a great Christmas! I was going to publish this on the 25th (heard some strange people celebrate Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve, isn't it weird?) but well, I didn't. So here's a late present for you all. Enjoy! :)

Disclaimer: Alas, I still own nothing.

As always, thanks to Atiaran for beta-reading.

* * *

**The Breaking of the Storm**

_Today_, Aragorn thought, gazing out the window.

The morning was a damp grey, shrouded in fog and blurred by the waterdrops on the windowpane. Far below the White City huddled beneath the remnants of the night's clouds, water streaming down the streets, and the field of Pelennor lay soaked, the brown winter grass shivering in a gust of cold air.

The sun was rising. Beyond the plain and the river and the forest, behind the blue shadow of the eastern mountains, it rose as a pale disc of light shrouded in mist - and where its fingers reached, it turned the world to gold. Every tiny drop of water caught its light and became its own sun, and dotted here and there on the courtyard outside the citadel, the puddles caught the patches of blue on the sky, and they became skies. The White Tree stretched out its tiny naked branches, defying the wind. Birds soared above it, singing.

Aragorn held the curtain aside so the sun could fall on his face. It felt warm, even through the windowpane. _Today_, he thought again, and smiled.

Today he would be out there. Today the road - that ribbon of mud, trampled by hooves and feet and furrowed by cartwheels - would be his, and the wind, and the open sky. Today he would follow that street - he could see parts of it from here, a white serpentine already filled with townspeople - and ride through that gate - he could see it too - and he would not look back, not once.

"Today," he whispered, leaning so close to the shimmering glass his breath steamed it up and the world went blurry behind it. He smiled and wiped it away with the sleeve of his night shirt.

"Today what?" came Arwen's voice from behind him, and he heard the whisper of soft silk as she sat up on the bed. While he had slept beneath the bear skin he was now wrapped in - the fire had burnt down to ashes, and there was always that little draught from the window, and those tiny cracks for the damp to get inside - she was happy with a thin silk blanket, and a night shirt with no sleeves. Last Aragorn looked she was still asleep, her eyes open but glazed over, lost in dreams; the shadow of a smile on her lips; and he had left the bed as quietly as he ever could because he did not want to wake her. She had looked so peaceful, and she often had a frown on her face nowadays. It was his fault, of course, because she was worried for him.

But now, when he turned and looked at her, just as the sun crept to her side of the bed and glinted in her hair, there was no frown, and the smile was not only a shadow.

"Today," he said, "we leave. At noon we'll be out of this city and then it's just us and the road and the..."

"Mud," Arwen filled in. The window was too high for her to see more than the sky from the bed, but the night's rain still lingered in the air. "Won't there be?"

"It will dry," Aragorn said carelessly. "Maybe not all of it. What does it matter? We'll be on horseback."

"So we will."

He left the window and sat down on the bed again, yawning. It was still early in the morning. Arwen snuggled close and he swept the bear skin around her - not so much because she froze, but because she warmed him.

"You know what's funny?" she asked, leaning her head to his chest. "Before we married, I used to long to wake up beside you in the mornings. Not for anything special - I mean, not because I've always wanted someone to talk to in the mornings or because I need someone to help me dress or anything like that - just because it would make me happy. I used to dream of doing that, of doing that every single morning for the rest of my life."

"And you will," Aragorn promised, smiling.

It was not the right thing to say.

"I haven't been," Arwen said. Her smile faded slightly. "I mean, I was at first, but lately you've always been away when I wake up. Or else I wake in the middle of the night to see you leave. When I woke up just now, Estel, I... I was frightened, because at first I didn't see you and I thought... I thought it had started all over again."

Aragorn shook his head. Inside him it hurt, violently so, and he knew he had hurt her even more - but it was over.

"I swear," he said solemnly, "I swear, Arwen, that I will never ever hurt you again. I will never lie to you again. I will never leave you again."

Arwen gave a sad sigh. "Not even you can swear that. I don't ask for it either, it's just..."

"It will be fine," Aragorn urged. He looked around, searching for a way to break the tension - he didn't want this discussion. He found a pillow behind him and as Arwen sat up straighter - maybe to get away from him, maybe to shift to a more comfortable position - he said: "I swear on this!" and threw it at the back of her head.

For once he took her by surprise. There was a long moment of shock, then Arwen cursed, turned, and hurled the pillow back much harder than he had.

"What was that for?"

He had to smile; her expression was too funny. "Ah, come on, it was nothing..."

"Stupid mortal," she growled. "I'll give you for nothing!"

Laughing Aragorn held his hands up as she reached for another pillow to throw, then he tried to get near her and seize her arms, which resulted in _her_ seizing _his_ arms, and throwing him backwards on the bed, and landing on top of him, and leaning close, and laughing. No, giggling. It was very long since Aragorn had seen her giggle.

"You may reconsider your definition of me as stupid," he said, beaming at her, because her eyes were shining and he needed nothing more than that to be happy again. "It may have been my intention to make you laugh."

"But was it your intention to tempt me into tickling you?"

"By the Vala-"

Fortunately for Aragorn, after growing up with Arwen's brothers he had become almost immune to tickling, and it was only when taken by surprise he was truly helpless. Arwen was strong, but he was heavier, and in the end she laughed so much all he had to do was lightly push her off him and then she lay there, still giggling, tangled in the blankets. It was Aragorn's turn to smile down on her, and he did, just as the sun reached that side of the bed and was reflected in her eyes - bright sun on a midnight sky, glowing, burning, with joy. Outside the window the clouds drifted away, and the sea was waiting, and maybe Faramir had already ordered the retinue to make ready once again. And Aragorn lay down beside Arwen and kissed her cheek, and everyhing was fine.

"Breakfast, maybe?" he said, tracing the smooth line of her chin with his finger. "I want to be ready at noon."

"Mhm."

"I'm sure all the clouds will be gone by then."

Arwen twisted so she could look at the window. The sky was slowly turning a darker, clearer blue. "Do you think Legolas has made up his mind yet?"

"Doesn't matter. He _will _come with us."

"I hope so," Arwen mused, "but really, there's no forcing that elf if he decides not to do something."

"There's tying him up and put him on one of the wagons."

"Of course," she said ironically. "Why didn't I think of that?"

Aragorn grinned, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and reached for his clothes which hung over the back of a chair. "It's not the worst I've done to him. " He pulled on his trousers - plain brown ones fit for a day in the saddle - and a fine woolen under-tunic. The over-tunic was fur lined velvet, black as night and with the Tree and the Stars and the Crown in silver thread on the front. "I shouldn't have given him any choice in the first place. I'm the king, for Eru's sake - why didn't I just command him to come with us?"

"Because he would kill you if you did?"

"Legolas _would_ have killed me a lot of times, but he never has. He can't scare me with that." He found Arwen's underdress folded on the chest by the foot of the bed and threw it to her.

"But Thranduil made sure you would have no command over the Ithilien elves," she said, wriggling out of her night shirt. "And honestly, if you defy that, Thranduil _will_ kill you."

Aragorn had to admit that was true. "He didn't say anything about tying them up and loading them on wagons, though."

"Or we could take Arod hostage. Where Arod goes, goes the elf, don't you think?"

"An excellent idea! Sophisticated. I like it."

Arwen actually looked rather pleased. Her brothers had always said she had no sense of mischief, but the truth was she had her moments.

"So what say you?" Aragorn asked, pulling on a pair of ornate leather boots. "Shall we try and talk to the princeling now and hope he is sensible, or shall we hide the horse first to be on the safe side?"

"I say let's eat breakfast and think about it. Help me lace up my dress, will you?"

While she got dressed and bound her hair in a simple braid, Aragorn went to the window at the other end of the room, the northern one, and pushed the curtains aside. The wind was still from the north, and clouds were gathering again - or so it seemed. Such things could change. The wind might turn, or the clouds might let their rain fall before they came to Minas Tirith. Sure, they looked heavy, and sure, the air was tense, but what did it mean? Nothing, of course.

Aragorn looked down. Far below he could see the King's Garden, surrounded by walls and much smaller than the Queen's, because no king had ever been interested in gardening. He grew medicinal plants and herbs there. The ground was almost bare, a few heaps of snow gleaming white in the yellow grass, but he knew the first sprouts would come up soon - yarrow, sage, _athelas_... Last spring he had helped Éowyn plan her own herb garden in Emyn Arnen, because Éowyn was learning to be a healer too. They had been digging and planting and watering all that day, on their knees in the soil, with earth even on their faces after wiping sweat away with the back of dirty hands. They'd had so much fun.

"I like the city this way," Arwen said, coming to stand beside him. "It's beautiful."

"It is," Aragorn said, and he could see that it was true, now that he knew he would leave it - but he could not feel it yet.

Arwen reached for the window latchand pushed the window open. The curtains billowed; cold, sharp air came rushing into the room. She leaned over the windowsill and looked down.

Where the King's Garden ended, so did the citadel. The smooth white wall fell down into the tangle of narrow alleys and broad streets that was the White City. Already the bakeries had opened, children played in the snow and the gates were open at all levels, people streaming in and out. From the main street, Aragorn knew, everything seemed in perfect order, but from here it was a spiderweb, twisted and intricate.

"It's not like Imladris, of course," he said.

"Nothing is like Imladris." Arwen reached out her hand and a blue tit swooped down and sat on her wrist, watching her curiously with eyes like black pearls. "And Gondor would have been a lot better if the winters had been more like the Imladris ones, wouldn't it?"

Aragorn smiled, thinking of winters in Imladris - that close to the mountains there was always lots of snow, and maybe the magic of elves had something to do with it. Sometimes the snow was so deep they could hardly open the doors in the mornings, and everything was so covered you could not tell tree from ground, nor hill from valley. He remembered sunny days when all the young elves sleighed down the hill behind the library, and the twins hiding on rooftops and bombarding people with snowballs as they passed underneath, and the amazing snow sculptures that Lindir made, and Glorfindel commenting that maybe Erestor was no elf, after all, because who had ever seen an elf slipping on a patch of ice and falling backwards and dropping all his important papers in such a disgraceful way?

"They were a lot livelier," he laughed.

"They were," Arwen agreed, watching the blue tit fly away over the citadel."But we had a snowball fight last year, on Mid-winter's Eve, remember? We had a lot of snowball fights that year."

Aragorn nodded. He remembered it well too. For a brief moment he felt sad, because he missed those snowball fights, and he missed planting gardens with Éowyn, but they were just like everything else he loved - unfit for a king. Then he shrugged it away.

"And I had about as many colds. Let's go and eat breakfast, shall we?"

"Just a moment. I want some air. You go ahead."

"I'll wait for you."

She gave him an amused look. "It's - what is it, ten yards? Fifteen? I think you'll manage on your own."

"Oh," he said, took her hand and pulled her away from the window. "but I thought we might go down to the first floor. I'm tired of eating alone. A king should eat with his people, should he not?"

Arwen's eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline with surprise. "Eru save me! Who are you, and what have you done to the grim man I am used to?"

"Perhaps," Aragorn said, "I am the merry youngling you fell in love with."

Arwen laughed all the way out of the royal apartments, but it was a laughter that warmed him.

Aragorn rose to his feet. "Impossible."

Horse Master Narion, tall and stout and confident as he was, lowered his eyes. He had just come from outside, and his stubby cheeks were red from the cold, his rough woolen cloak beaded with droplets. His boots had left tracks of mud across the floor of the dining hall.

"How could this have happened?" Aragorn demanded, his voice rising until it could be heard all over the room, but there was more fear than anger in it. "Where there no guards? Eru forbid, weren't the stables barred?"

"We don't know how it happened, Your Grace," Narion replied, solemnly shaking his head. "The stable boys at duty last night will be questioned, as will all the watchmen posted near the stables, but I cannot see how it's possible that... that he's escaped."

"And he is nowhere to be found?"

"No, Your Grace. We've searched the stables and the pastures and all of the sixth level, and the fifth level will be searched as we speak, but by the graces of the Valar, how could a horse have made its way there on its own?"

* * *

Aragorn shook his head and repeated: "Impossible."

Outside, the mist had not yet lifted. The sun threw pale squares of light through the windows to his left, glinting dimly in the silver plates and goblets on the High Table; even the tapestry on the wall behind, with all its pearls and metal threads, failed to look as dazzling as usual. Three fires filled the room with heat and smoke, spitting at the dampness of the air. The commoners on the benches below the dais all wore shawls and cloaks to ward off the cold.

Despite the weather, up until now it had been easy to keep his good mood. The sun was shining after all, and the day would be cold but clear - a good day for a journey.

"His Majesty is happy this morning," Counsellor Beren had commented as Aragorn bade him join himself and Arwen at the table. As always in the mornings, the benches of the commoners were crowded, and the High Table on its stone dais, where nobles, counsellors and honoured guests flanked the king, was almost empty. Only Faramir had been there when Aragorn and Arwen entered, and only Counsellor Beren and young lord Findel had appeared after that.

During these last months - these _dark_ months - Aragorn had preferred the silence and privacy of the royal apartments to the dining hall, and had eaten there as often as he could get away with it. The thought of having all the nobles and counsellors of the court surrounding him with their chatter, like the buzzing of a hundred persistent flies, made him feel sick. It would still have made him sick, even though the dark time was behind him. When he told Arwen he was tired of eating alone, it wasn't the gossip and smalltalk of court he longed for.

In the mornings, like now, the voices from the lower benches reached up to the King's Seat on the dais - the voices of soldiers at their dice, of squires boasting about coming glory, of the blacksmith and the armourer flirting with the chirurgeon's daughter, of servants whispering as they stirred the porridge pots hanging over the fires - the voices of real, true people, who didn't plan their every word in order to advance their own interests; people who didn't always watch their tongues, who didn't scheme and plot and act every hour of the day. Most of all, although they might have been almost as far away from him as a human being could be, they were the sort of people he knew and understood.

And Aragorn loved listening to them. He couldn't join them, but he needn't do that either: listening was enough. When the rangers told their stories by the fireside at night, Aragorn had often only listened, and kept his thoughts to himself; his heart they had still shared. It was the way he had always wanted it, and he wanted it now too.

When the talkative Counsellor Beren joined them the listening was over, but it was fine, because Aragorn liked him too. He didn't scheme as much as the others, and was always straight to the point, which might have been the reason he wasn't higher up in the ranks. They had a very amusing discussion on the difficulties of travelling to the coast at this time of the year, and how very adventurous it could be to get stuck in a bog during a heavy rainstorm when night was coming.

Faramir had been less happy. "I sent men to check the road," he said, glaring solemnly at the windows as a cloud briefly covered the sun. "If it's too muddy the wagons will get stuck. You know how it is. They won't make it half a mile, and then..."

"Then we'll have to go without them," Aragorn said, helping himself to a slice of bread. Before he even had opened his mouth to ask for it, a servant was behind him pouring water in his goblet.

"Go without them?" Faramir repeated. "With all due respect, Aragorn, we'd need a hundred packhorses to carry all the luggage, and, say, thirty men to tend them. We don't even have that many horses." His face became even grimmer, as if he realised that Aragorn had meant what he had said. "There is more rain to come. The clouds are heavy. If the road is too muddy, or if the weather gets worse, we will have no choice but to wait for it to dry."

Aragorn wasn't going to wait, not a day, not an hour more. "We don't need all of the luggage. If we don't have wagons, we won't need the carpenters, and we can leave all their equipment behind."

"And two carpenters and their equipment will make such a big difference."

"You don't need thirty men to tend a hundred horses," Aragorn tried.

"Perhaps not," Faramir replied firmly, "but we still do not have a hundred horses."

Ironically, that was the moment when Master Narion came running into the dining hall to tell them they were yet another horse short.

If only it had been one of the soldiers' horses - they could be replaced. Even Bronind, or Dae, or Fréonda, or even Arod, could have been replaced, although their riders might be more reluctant to leave without them - but why make such a fuss about a missing horse? It would not be found faster because its rider was still in Minas Tirith.

But this was not a soldier´shorse, and it was not Bronind or Dae or Fréonda or Arod.

This was Roheryn.

"I will go down and see for myself," Aragorn said, pushing back his chair. "There must be some explanation. Roheryn cannot have escaped the stables himself, can he?"

"That's what worries me," Master Narion said, hurrying to keep up as Aragorn rounded the High Table and stepped down from the dais. "He cannot, not unless some of the stableboys have been very careless - and I trust my boys, all of them. I fear... I fear, Your Grace, that he might have been stolen. Not that anyone should be able to get into the stables either."

"Stolen," Aragorn repeated, and felt as though Narion had just punched him hard in the stomach.

Stolen meant there was less chance to find Roheryn, because he would be hidden - somewhere far from the City, if the thief was any clever. It would mean he would be sold, maybe shipped away, maybe killed when the thief realised he was impossible to sell. Roheryn was not the most noble-looking of horses - he was built for travelling long distances, for rains and storms and battles, and he was grey and spotted, not majestically black or beautifully white - but he was the king's horse, and easily recognizable. Anyone who had seen Aragorn riding would know the horse was his. And who would dare to buy the king's own horse?

It was all Aragorn could do to not start running - not that it would have mattered. They were out of the dining hall, and he started walking even faster down the hallway, fear building up inside him. Narion was close behind, slightly out of breath, but Aragorn took no notice. Roheryn could not be gone. Not Roheryn.

The puddles on the courtyard were ankle deep, but he waded through them on a straight line from the entrance doors to the tunnel. Water ran down the steps of the tunnel, but he ignored it; water filled the street outside, but he didn't even feel it. It had to be a mistake. Roheryn was a smart horse. He would not have let himself be taken.

The courtyard at the sixth level was just like the day before - crowded and noisy. Once again the oxen were harnessed to the already loaded wagons, and the soldiers saddled their horses and led them out into the sunlight. The carpenters were arguing again, the chirurgeon told everyone near him how very fragile his instruments were; Arwen's maid Maew struggled with a painted wooden chest that was way too heavy for her. The air was biting cold, the mist a breath of tiny droplets.

The stable didn't look any different either - there were no signs of a break-in - and for a moment Aragorn foolishly thought that must mean something. It didn't, of course. Even the most stupid of thieves would know how to lift the bar from its hinges. Or to not use the doors at all.

"I don't believe there is anything to see in there," Narion said, nodding at the stable. As they came closer, a couple of younglings who had been standing by the doors gave them wary looks and slipped away. They must be some of the stable boys, scared of Aragorn because they had lost his horse. Didn't they see that he wasn't angry, but scared as well?

"But," Narion went on, "I think Your Majesty knows more about things like these than I do. Maybe you should take a look." Another young man tugged shyly at his master's sleeve and Narion turned to him. Aragorn went on alone.

The stable was almost empty - Dae greeted him with a soft whinny, and lord Cambeleg's startingly white mare looked up from her bag of oats, but the others must have been taken outside to be saddled. Just like from the outside, it _looked_ normal. No broken latches, no signs of struggle. If someone had tried to sneak away with Roheryn in the night he would have kicked and reared, but there were no signs of that; no signs of anything out of the ordinary at all. The stall door was closed and locked, the stall itself in perfect order.

Aragorn peered over the door, completely lost. The sight made him more confused than scared, because it didn't make sense at all. If Roheryn had been stolen, he would have seen it, but if Roheryn had escaped by himself, the door would have been open. Was somebody pulling a prank on him? The twins couldn't possibly be back, could they? There was Legolas, of course, but Aragorn didn't think the elf wouldn't be in a mood for pranks. He moved to open the stall door... and there, pinned to the door just by the latch, was a tiny piece of parchment.

"This gets worse and worse, Your Majesty," came Narion's voice behind him.

"It does?" Aragorn carefully took the parchment off its nail; now this _must_ mean the twins were behind it, however strange it seemed.

Narion sounded grim. "I believe so, Your Majesty, because - or have you found something? What's that?"

Aragorn smoothed out the parchment. It contained only a few words, hastily scribbled down and difficult to read. There was no explanation. It was typical for Gimli to write such a short message; obviously there was another note, or something he had said that Aragorn had forgotten - or did the dwarf expect that he would understand?

_I already regret this, but Aragorn, don't judge him. On the inside he is crying__._

That was all. It made no sense. Aragorn stared at the note as if hoping it might tell him more if he looked long enough - but he did not understand. Regret what? Don't judge who?

"My lord?" Narion tried. "Does it say anything?"

"No," Aragorn said with bitter disappoinment. "Nothing."

"Apparently there was one thing more that the boys didn't dare to tell me," Narion said grimly. "Roheryn is not the only horse who is gone. Arod is as well."

Arod...

"Why anyone would steal that horse fails me... I mean, instead of Dae and Bronind and lord Cambeleg's horse... they all _look_ so much more valuable. Arod is so small. I..."

"Yes," Aragorn said hoarsely, while his heart started to pound. "Yes, it's strange." He turned, balling his fist so Gimli's note crunched between his fingers. "Find the guards posted by the gate at dawnbreak. They might know."

"Your Majesty, what..."

"Excuse me," Aragorn said, pushing himself past the horse master, and in the next moment he was running, running over the courtyard, running down the street, all things kingly and appropriate forgotten.

It made sense now. Arod was gone, and Roheryn was gone, and Gimli didn't want him to blame _Legolas_, because _Legolas_ had taken them, because _Legolas_ had left, because he... he must think Aragorn would come after Roheryn. And on the inside Legolas wasn't crying; on the inside he was childish and stupid and selfish...

It stung like knives inside him, knowing that. Aragorn ran all the way to the entrance hall, water splashing around his feet, his heart beating so fast he thought it would burst, and maybe that would be for the best. The usual way up the stairs would take too long. He turned left, then right, and down a hallway, and into a rarely used audience chamber, and in behind the statue of Beruthiel and her cats.

He had no candle, so he darted up the narrow stairs in the dark, stumbling and groping for the cold stone walls. Three times he fell, scraping up the heels of his hands; he even slammed headfirst into the wall once, misjudging the turn of the stair, but he felt no pain. In front of him in the dark he saw Elladan's empty room in the guest apartments, the bed neatly made, the used sheets folded on top of the coverlet. He saw the place where Elrohir's sword should have been leaning against the wall, the place where his cloak did not hang. He saw the street beneath the chestnut trees, snow covering the tracks of elven feet until not even he could see them. _Not again_, he thought, stumbling for the fourth time over an uneven step, rising with a curse that turned into something like a sob. _Not again._

But as soon as he opened the door to the guest apartments, he knew they were empty. There was no life in there, no warmth, no breath. Still he opened every door and called out their names, pleading for them to be there, to have stayed. He got no answer.

Gimli had written another note, left on his nightstand. Aragorn took it with shaking hands. The words went blurry as he read.

_Aragorn, this is madness. I have to go with the elf because I will not leave him alone, but don't blame me for it. I never wished to have a part in it. Don't blame him either. You are both fools._

Do not blame them? Then who was he to blame? Legolas had gone, and Gimli with him. They had left.

Aragorn sat down on the abandoned bed, breathing hard. Tiny drops of blood where he had scratched his hands had stained the parchment. He stared at them for a moment, trying to grasp the meaning of this.

Then he shivered, and buried his face in his hands, and for the first time in many years he cried.

* * *

He did not know for how long he sat there, staring at the little piece of parchment, but the tears had long since dried on his face when he became aware of the rain drumming hard on the window. Aragorn looked up. All he could see was the water running down the glass; behind that everything was a blur.

At first he did not mind. He could not possibly go on as planned now, could he? Not when Legolas had left him like this. Not when Gimli - trusty, loyal Gimli - had abandoned him. He could not pretend that nothing had changed.

But if he did not do as he had planned, then what?

In the end he gathered what courage and strength he had left and rose, tossed Gimli's note on the embers of the fire, rubbed the salt streaks from his cheeks, and left the guest apartments with his head held high. It must be about noon; the retinue must be ready to leave. He could go to the royal apartments and change into something warmer, then walk down to the sixth level, find a horse that would do instead of Roheryn - at least he knew Roheryn was in good hands, unless Legolas had lost all sense - and then they could set off. Lord Rafthir had a very fine horse, and surely he would be honoured to borrow it to the king. If he didn't think too much about it all, it didn't feel so bad.

At the end of the hallway outside the guest apartments, where a flight of broad marble steps led up to the fourth floor, he found Arwen and Faramir, talking in hushed voices with their heads close together. He froze, still some paces away. The sight of them standing in the shadow of a pillar, their faces hidden from his view, reminded him too much of yesterday, when he found them in the morning room and it turned out they had been talking about him. But this time, when Arwen caught sight of him, she didn't look guilty - only sad.

"Estel," she sighed and came to meet him, her eyes full of pity. "Master Narion found the guards at post by the fifth gate this morning. They said Legolas and Gimli had passed on Arod, and they had Roheryn with them, and the guards let them out. You understood, didn't you?"

"I did."

She sighed again, wrapping her slender arms around him, and for a brief moment he let her comfort him. Her body was so warm, her arms strong and safe. But when she looked up at him, again with pity in her eyes, he felt pain welling up inside him. It was unbearable. Gently he loosened her arms from their grip.

"Is everything ready?"

"Ready?" Now she frowned.

"It's almost noon, isn't it? It's time to leave."

"Estel..." Arwen took a step back, her glance briefly darting to the side - she had not expected this. "You have seen the weather, haven't you?"

"What of it?"

"We cannot leave now."

"We've already talked about this. I..."

"No." Arwen's face hardened. "We talked about setting off when there could be rain. Now we're talking about leaving when it's already raining. Look outside, Estel. It's near storm. We _cannot_ leave now."

"I can."

"Yes, _you_ can, because you want to! But do the servants want it, or the soldiers? No they don't; and they don't have a choice. You cannot treat them like that. And do you think I want it, or Faramir, or - "

"Then I'll go alone!" Aragorn exploded, slamming his fist into the pillar beside him... in the next moment he realised what he had said. _I will go alone._ Arwen did not laugh, but she would have been right to, because it was so pathetic. And then, suddenly, _everything_ seemed pathetic. A foolish attempt to do what he wanted and still do as he should - a foolish belief that it would be the _same_, that he could feel like a ranger and still be a king - that was what it all was. Pathetic.

"I ordered the journey to be postponed," Arwen said, her voice as hard as steel. "Change it if you will, but Dae stays in the stables, and Maew remains here. And my luggage."

"And you," Aragorn said.

"And me," she confirmed.

They looked at each other, but it was as though there was a wall between them, or a ravine, and they had just burnt down the bridge. He had never, ever felt this far away from her. One and a half yard of stone floor, one and a half yard of air - and an eternity of anger and regret.

Almost at the same time they averted their eyes. Arwen's face softened. The sadness came back into her eyes, blocking out the shimmer of the evening star in them.

"I don't want to argue with you, Estel," she said, biting her lip. "I never wanted that. It's just, I don't... I hope I'm wrong; the Valar knows I hope I'm wrong, but I don't believe in what you're doing. I think you'll hurt yourself. And your're hurting others in the process."

Aragorn wanted nothing more than hug her, to lean his head against her chest, to feel the strength in her arms, the warmth in her breath. For a moment he thought he could do just that, that if he did everything would be fine, and the wall would be gone, and they could go through this together. But he hesitated, and the moment was gone. He turned and walked away.

The thought that he would change into something warmer was still stuck in his head, so that was what he did. Up the staircase, then left, then down the hallway, and there were the royal apartments; into the bedchamber, into the wardrobe. The furlined velvet cloak was a monstrous thing, so wide four people could have wrapped themselves easily inside it, with a huge hood and silver embroidery all over it. It closed with three great silver clasps the shape of stars, and was trimmed with squirrelskin at the hem and in the hood, and bearskin in the rest. It was the warmest thing Aragorn owned.

Yet when he took it up, he felt sick. It was too much: too silvery, too black. He put it on, clasped it together, hated it.

His eyes darted towards the chest in the alcove, just outside the wardrobe door, below the northern window. He rarely opened that chest; there was nothing in it that he needed. He was going to pass it, to let his eyes wander away from it as they usually did, but then he stopped. For a long time he stood still, wavering, his heart pounding the slow and heavy rhythm of doubt. The rain hammered on the window, the wind howled - and now he crossed the room and knelt before the chest. Why by the graces of the Valar did he do that? He had already made up his mind so many times, had already made the decision to leave it behind. This was like denying everything he had said earlier. It was a stupid, irrational decision, unfit for a king.

The heavy lid squeaked slightly as he pushed it open.

In the dim light of the candle flickering on the wall, an old iron brooch glinted faintly, still fastened to the ragged neckline of his old cloak. Aragorn lifted it up, carefully, as if handling some old and fragile relic. It was heavy, still stained with dried mud and maybe blood at the hem; patches of odd fabric and rough, crooked seams showed where he had once mended it. This cloak had survived for more and harder years than the velvet one would ever see. Aragorn touched the brooch once and put the cloak aside.

Beneath it was his tunic, green once, but blackened with age and dirt. Once it had been beautiful, with embroidery along the neckline and down the front. Now it was nothing but an old and precious rag, the embroidery seams falling apart as he touched them.

There was the undertunic, plain linen, and a pair of half mittens, and the rucksack with all his belongings - not that they were many. A leather pouch for medicines, another for pipe weed, a pouch for coins. Aragorn took them up one by one and put them on the floor in a neat line; it felt like holding the belongings of someone recently deceased; like going through them one last time before they were sent to auction. A box of tinder, a whetstone, a roll of string. Needles and thread. A dagger. Nothing more.

His old bow hung above the fireplace in the study, beside the sword he had used before Anduril was reforged, but the quiver was here, the leather hard and brittle. And beneath it was the Lothlorien cloak - still shimmering like when it was new, still soft as silk and perfectly clean. Aragorn held it for a long time. Now _this_ was the warmest thing he owned, and the most valuable.

His legs aching from being bent so long, Aragorn sat back on the floor, the cloak still clutched in his hands. He felt like a child, lost and abandoned, with no one to tell him what to do. It would be so simple, to put on the clothes and leave... for the first time he seriously considered doing that. For the first time it seemed like a possibility. He couldn't find it in his heart to care for Gondor at all - yet there was Arwen, and there was that faint longing inside him - fainter than a memory, maybe nothing but the echo of a memory - of having a home.

The rain kept drumming on the windows while he sat there, immobile, telling himself to think, then losing himself in thoughts that didn't take him anywhere. Someone knocked on the door, opened it even, but whomever it was he did not see Aragorn in the alcove, and before Aragorn could think of answering he was gone. The candle burnt down in its holder. Aragorn played with the leaf clasp; opened it, closed it; took it off, pinned it back. Took it off again and clutched it in his hand. It felt strangely warm, as if there was a fire inside it.

At long last he rose, cursing the velvet cloak as it caught at his wrists. The silver clasps chafed at his neck. He pulled them down below the collar of his tunic and walked to the window.

Outside the world was a lake, grey and hazy. The White City faded into thick fog, and farther away the plains would be turned to muck and streams and the roads would be impassable. He knew that, and it was just as well. In the courtyard far below, the White Tree shivered in a pool of water and the guards surrounding it stood trembling as the rain hammered on their helmets, dripped down their faces and trickled beneath their cloaks. They were the only ones there.

_Except_...

Except for that figure running across the courtyard, splashing through the puddles. That tall figure in the grey cloak, with a rucksack flung over one slender shoulder, and strands of long pale hair escaping the hood and curling down the embroidered front of its cloak. At the mouth of the tunnel that led down to the gate, it slowed down, only barely stopping, and looked back towards the citadel. There was something about that gesture that piqued Aragorn's curiosity. He ought to be too weary to care... but as the figure vanished into the tunnel, he backed away from the window and turned to the door.

The velvet cloak trailed behind him as he left the royal apartments.

* * *

Thank you for reading, please review! :D


	5. The Wanderer

Disclaimer: I tried to sneak away with some gold from Gondor's treasury, but it didn't work.

Onwards to chapter five! Thanks to Atiaran for beta-reading, and to everyone who has reviewed this far. Enjoy! :)

* * *

The Wanderer

When Aragorn came down to the courtyard on the sixth level, it was empty. The wagons stood abandoned, their covers tearing at their fastenings in the wind; all doors and shutters had been closed against the rain, all horses and the oxen had been led back into the stables, and all those who had been here half an hour ago, preparing the journey, had left to seek shelter. Water filled the tracks of feet and hooves that crossed each other in the mud.

Aragorn stood at the very edge, where the stream-crossed earth-and-straw gave way to stone, breathing hard, because he had been running all the way. The silver clasps of the heavy velvet cloak - even heavier now that it was full of water - chafed at his neck. He had been running, and yet he had come too late - again.

Then he turned on his heel and ran back the way he had come, but where the street split in two outside the citadel gate, he chose the one that led downwards. She could not be out of the City. Not yet.

Instead of the hard drumming on the windows of the citadel, the rain fell on the streets as a soft murmur. It ran whispering down the walls of the white stone houses, skittering and jumping down the cobbled streets, as if to invite him to play with it. He ran through grey veils of droplets that the wind whipped up, cold and soothing on his face. The houses lost their outlines, so that there was no telling where one house ended and the next began; the lights in their windows became pale blotches of yellow, the shapes of trees and lamp posts blurred and unclear. The street was an island, floating on a grey sea. It would have been easy to forget where he was going and why he was in a hurry, and just keep on running forever through the shadows.

When he came to the gate that led to the fifth level, he bent his head low beneath the hood of his cloak and passed the watchmen in silence. They were the first other people he had met, and they only looked up briefly, cold and shivering and longing to be inside as they were. Aragorn kept his head low until he was some twenty yards past them.

When he looked up, there she was, just about to fade into the haze of rain where the street made a turn. She was just a shadow to Aragorn, the shape of a woman in a grey cloak, and yet he knew it was her.

"Wait!" he called, and set off running again down the drenched street. "Éowyn - by the Valar - _Éowyn!_"

And Éowyn stopped, startled, and warily looked over her shoulder. She couldn't see him any more clearly than he could see her, and his voice was almost drowned in the rain. Fréonda gave a whinny; recognizing him, maybe.

"Who..."

"It's me," Aragorn breathed. "It's Ar..."

"Strider! I was afraid I wouldn't get to say goodbye!"

A window to her left was open, letting voices out into the rain and perhaps their voices in behind the walls, and Éowyn was right of course - they didn't want to be recognized here, and there was no reason not to be careful. Still Aragorn winced when he heard it. _Strider_. However much he struggled against it, the name seemed to be glued to him.

He pulled at the silver clasps, uncomfortable. "My lady," he said.

They met under the window, where the street flattened out enough for the water to form a great puddle around their feet, and silently turned to walk down the street together in the rain. Expect for the rain and the voices from the window, slowly fading into nothing behind them, Fréonda's hooves on the cobbles were the only sounds.

Aragorn had known, as soon as he saw her crossing the courtyard, that it was Éowyn. He had understood somehow that she was up to something; that it had something to do with horses he knew simply because it was Éowyn, and that was why he headed to the courtyard. And that rucksack. She still had it flung over one shoulder, and it looked very heavy. Today seemed an odd day to go out for a ride, but Éowyn was an odd woman, so it made some sense.

"Did Arwen send you?" she asked now, as they walked in shadow where a great merchant's villa reached over the street. She had pushed the hood back from her face, and the loose strands of hair that had escaped from her braid curled and ringled down the front of her cloak, pale as winter's dawn. Her cloak wasn't grey, not really; it had only looked like that through the rain. Now he could see that it was dark green like a late summer oak, and pinned together with a round brooch such as the Rohirrim wore. "I looked for you everywhere. Arwen said you'd be in your bedchamber, but I knocked - well, I even looked inside - and you weren't there. I told her that if she saw you, she should send you down."

Aragorn looked away. "I haven't talked to Arwen in a while."

"I thought so," Éowyn said softly, and then he knew that she knew they had been quarrelling. Surely she must have seen it in Arwen, if she had talked to her. He didn't want to talk about it.

Éowyn seemed to understand that too. "So, anyway," she said, "I didn't mean to leave without telling you, but I want to be in Duinnan before it darkens, and I truly looked everywhere, so - "

"Hold on," Aragorn said, stopping dead. "Duinnan?"

"Yes."

That did not make sense. Duinnan was a village on the border of Anorien, too far for a day's outing; it was almost by the Drúadan forest, along the Great West Road that lead towards...

"By the graces of the Valar," Aragorn breathed, staring at her. "_Edoras?_"

Éowyn smiled - a small, triumphant smile. "Edoras."

And of course, that was how it was. In the back of his mind, Aragorn had seen it coming. She had talked about it for so long and when Éowyn wanted to do something, she did it, no matter what.

She was not leaving for a day's outing. She did not plan to be back at nightfall. Éowyn was heading for Rohan.

It wasn't like when Gimli and Legolas left - it didn't feel like a betrayal, simply because he didn't expect her to be there for him at all times. She was a friend, a sister even, but it was a different sort of friendship. But in one way it was worse, because Éowyn was bound by almost the same chains as he was - duty, honour, expectations - and now she did what he dared not. Broke them.

Or had they ever been there? Maybe you cannot chain one who has once broken free.

"I told you that before, didn't I?" Éowyn asked. "That I didn't want to go to Dol Amroth."

She had stopped as well, just where the light of a nearby window spilled out onto the street and was reflected in the rain. A cascade of topazes tumbled down her shoulders and fell into puddles of molten gold. She was beautiful, in a wild kind of way; her hair tied in that simple braid, her eyes glowing untamed, her body strong and slender beneath the ragged wool of a long tunic, the wrinkles of roughspun trousers. And that cloak, with that round ornate brooch that made her look like a rider of Rohan.

Aragorn remembered. How long ago it felt, that sunny spring morning when they stood on the courtyard at the sixth level and watched the horses graze and the clouds drift across a clear blue sky. Then he had felt young. Now the weight of eighty-nine years were on his shoulders.

"You wanted to get away from court, and in Dol Amroth there is... court."

"Yes, there is."

"And you wanted your sword sharpened. Just in case, you said."

Éowyn grinned. "I _was_ planning to go with you to Dol Amroth, and then I'd go on to Rohan when you went back home, so I wanted to have everything prepared once we left Minas Tirith. But now that it's been cancelled - Arwen said postponed, but I doubt it. If she wants good weather she'll have to wait until summer. So I thought I'd leave on my own."

"Now?"

Her smile became... distant. Part of her was already out there, heading for the horizon. He could see it in her eyes. "Yes."

The pain that hit him then, like a thousand glass shards exploding in his chest, had nothing to do with her. Not really. It was just that he seemed to be losing everyone - _everyone_; those who stayed close to him were still not by his side, still not where he needed them, and somehow he hurt them all without meaning to. And Éowyn was perhaps the only one who could understand him. Oh, Arwen knew pain, and longing, and frustration; but she had never understood this lust for wander that he shared with Éowyn. She could try, but she could never fully grasp what freedom meant to him.

"So," Éowyn said, hitching the rucksack higher onto her shoulder, "like I said, I want to be in Duinnan before it turns dark, so I better leave as soon as possible. I've already said goodbye to Faramir and Arwen, and..."

Aragorn grabbed her arm.

"Wait," he said. The pain in his chest had turned into something cold and choking, and fluttering like the wings of a bird all the same. He remembered that feeling: it was fear. "Éowyn, you cannot... how can... you're a lady, Éowyn. You cannot just leave on your own like this, it's..."

"Inappropriate?" she said. "Yes, it is. I know. Just like it would be for you. I don't care."

Aragorn was lost. "How can you not care? People will talk about you, they will - "

"Yes." Éowyn sighed, and she seemed to shrink. "They will talk. They already do. _The lady Éowyn is no real lady. The lady Éowyn is a disgrace. The lady Éowyn is so ugly._ I've heard it all."

"Ugly?"

"I have freckles", she said, "and blisters on my hands, and I don't put up my hair like the other ladies. Yes, they say that I am ugly."

Aragorn stared at her. He had had no idea.

"And," Éowyn went on, "I still don't care. I spent too many years of my life regretting I was born a woman, but what use is there in regretting something you cannot change? I have stood face to face with death. One day I will face it again. And until that day comes, I will not waste a minute on regretting. I am who I am, not who they expect me to be."

Aragorn was silent. Maybe he had seen death too many times for it to affect him - or maybe, two years after the war ended, he had already forgotten what it looked like.

Éowyn straightened. There was steel in her voice, the sound of blades crossing.

"They can talk," she said, "for others praise me. The men who fought to protect these walls, the lords whose sons survived the battle, the fathers and mothers of those who were slain - they talk of me too, and for them I am a _hero_. I was their sword and their shield; I was their saviour, because I defeated the Witch King, and they will remember that. They won't care if I'm not ladylike. Besides", she added as an afterthought, "I don't really have any choice. If I would be bound like that again, like I was in Edoras when my uncle was sick, then I could as well lay down and die."

"And what about me?" Aragorn asked; it came out as barely more than a hoarse whisper. "If the people don't see me as a king - if they don't respect me - Gondor will fall. I mean, not because it's _me_, but I'm the king. I can't afford to be talked about."

He could see it on Éowyn, how she understood. She had not heard what had been said in the morning room, when Arwen and Faramir and Gimli found out what had been troubling him; he had never told her, had never thought of it. But there it was, in her eyes: the memory of long tedious days behind closed doors, of loneliness and bitterness and overwhelming cold, of a future bleak and inevitable like a straight grey road... and the memory of wind whispering outside the windows - _Éowyn, Aragorn..._

"Éowyn," she said, "Aragorn. We were born a lady and a king, but those are who we are. No one can change that. Not even we."

"And if we have to?"

Éowyn shook her head. "You know what happened to me. There is no choice. Sooner or later you have to break free, or Aragorn will die, and Elessar will be but an empty shell. But Aragorn, you..." She looked up at him. "You are not only a king. You are a legend. If you were to leave like me - if you became a ranger again - wouldn't you just be even more of a legend?"

He followed her down to the city gate on the first level, and all the way the walked in silence. In Aragorn's heart a decision was taking form - slowly and warily, as when the sun rises after a storm. He dared not to make it clearer yet. He dared not to pretend it was there. After so many days - no, weeks - no, _months_ - of convincing himself there was no way to do what he somehow had always known he would do, in the end, when he couldn't deny it any more, he was frightened.

The gate in the black wall was open, but only the guards stood there shivering, water pouring down on their helmets. The wall was glinting bleakly, hard and unforgiving as ever, a proud and ancient sentinel always on guard. Aragorn often got the feeling the wall was watching; not him, but the plain outside, and the river, alert for enemies.

They stood for a while beneath the arch, just where it ended: the sky was above them if they leaned forward just a little. Aragorn felt strangely safe, standing there in the rain, because he knew that no one would recognize him. To anyone looking out of a window, Éowyn would just be a youngling with a rucksack, a courier maybe, and Aragorn would be an ordinary man in a great black cloak. Through the veils of rain, who could have told that the cloak was made of velvet? There was no light for the silver embroidery to shine in, and at distance the stones forming the seven stars would be plain and dull.

Again he pulled at the silver clasps, and then he opened then and let the cloak balance somewhat unsecurely on his shoulders. At last he could breathe. Though perhaps it wasn't only the cloak's fault.

"I was wrong," he said, while Éowyn checked Fréonda's saddle straps one last time. "I have been wrong all the time. I'm not afraid to leave, not at all; I know how to hide, I will not be seen. I'm afraid that I will not come back again." He looked at her. "How do you know you will come back?"

"Of course I will," Éowyn said. "Here is where Faramir is."

"And so is Arwen."

"So she is."

"I could never leave her."

Éowyn smiled. "When I rode to war, I sought freedom. Freedom and glory and death. I found something else. Something I didn't know I needed. That was Faramir. And you lost something you didn't know you would miss, didn't you? Maybe, if you leave, you will find something that leads you back home."

Aragorn looked out, to the road that began by his feet and went on and on. He couldn't see the horizon from the courtyard, but he could see the mountains.

"If I meet Legolas and Gimli," Éowyn said, swinging herself up in the saddle in one smooth movement, "shall I say something?"

Aragorn straightened so he could look at her, and as he did so, he felt the velvet cloak slowly slip backwards from his shoulders. He did not move to catch it. With a splash and a thud it fell to the ground, and brown water washed over the embroidery and the stones forming the seven stars. Yet the leaf clasp he still held clutched tightly in his hand, and it still felt warm, as if it was alive.

"Tell them," he said, "to look to the east."

* * *

The wanderer stopped by the roadside to push his dripping hood away from his face. It was raining, a heavy spring rain that turned the road to muck and the last of the snow to pools of brown water. Grey clouds hung low over the hills, all the way from one horizon to the next, thick and dense and without the slightest sign of movement. The road - naught more than a narrow ribbon of trampled ground, where the grass hadn´t even bothered to start growing - was all ankle-deep mud and trickles of water now, vanishing in a curtain of rain and fog, winding and twisting to where the soft hills gave way to a climbing forest.

The wanderer turned to look over his shoulder. He was a tall man, slender, but bent under a heavy pack, with dark hair plastered to his forehead and water dripping from the tip of his nose. There was a slight frown on his face. He had mud all over his boots and up to his knees, because he had waded over a flooded stream earlier and the water had been deeper than he thought. His cloak was so heavy with water it dragged at the ground.

Behind him, there was nothing but the same rolling hills, covered in yellow winter grass, glinting here and there with water and dotted with thorny bushes and naked trees. The City had vanished in thick grey fog. When he realised that, that the City was behind him, that he had gotten away, the wanderer felt something lift from his heart, like a bird spreading its wings and flying away with all his worries. He straightened up. Suddenly he could breathe.

It was gone.

Something bubbled in the wanderer's chest, threatening to break free. All around him the rain washed down, hammering on the little coltsfoots dotted by the roadside, but the wanderer didn't mind. He spread his arms like wings and tossed his head back and in the rain, he laughed.

He laughed because for the first time in many months, he felt free.

The road led steadily on to the north, and hills and valleys succeeded each other all the way to the bleak glinting of grey water that was Anduin, and it kept raining. It rained as the wanderer sat down in the wet grass beneath an oak and ate some bread and cheese, and it rained as dusk came and the puddles on the road became too dark to see. Occasionally the wanderer tired of it, but then he remembered the cold stone walls and the arched windows and the echoing hallways that he had left behind, and he laughed because rain was better than all that. And he laughed as a crane spread its great wings over a pond to his left and lifted high up in the sky, and he laughed as a newborn calf stumbled along beside its mother on a field beside the road, and he laughed when the wind caught his heavy cloak and whispered his name, because it was _his_ name, and no one could take it from him.

At dusk he found a village - just a cluster of tiny grey houses, so old they had sunk into the earth as if they had grown out of it, clinging to the sides of a valley by the side of a little stream - and there he slept in the hayloft of a ramshackle barn, somewhat warm and dry. He fell asleep to the sound of water dripping from the roof, and rats scuttling over the floor and a water wheel squeaking and splashing in the stream. He woke with a smile on his lips.

The wanderer didn´t know it, but the villagers whispered about him long afterwards - that stranger who turned up at dusk as if sprung from a fairy tale, who was gone the next morning with only the smell of pipeweed showing he had ever been there, and who so resembled the king.

A second day passed, and a third, and a fourth. The road turned westwards, and the forest stood up from the ground to his left, silently watching him as he walked, whispering with ancient, moss-grown branches that had not yet grown their first tender leaves. The Great West Road followed its outskirts, but always at a few yards' distance, with a deep ditch between. The shadows were too dark, the trees stood too close; long ago there had been roads through there, very straight and paved, but no one used them any more.

But the wanderer had an errand in the forest.

At dusk on the fourth day, when the rain had passed and the setting sun threw gold over the grasslands, the wanderer left the road and crossed the ditch. It was broad here, more of a canal, but there was an old bridge made of rotting old boards where you could cross if you were careful. The wanderer would never have found it if he hadn't known where to look, and he would never have never known where to look if he hadn't known these lands, long, long ago when he was young. He almost missed it now. But there it was, much more rickety than he remembered it, and behind it there was the remnants of a road - a few stones visible beneath the undergrowth, and an old broken pillar hidden among the briars. So many stories, the wanderer thought, all old and forgotten. Had anyone seen him, they would have thought he was one of those stories.

Beneath the trees it darkened quickly, but the wanderer didn't want to stop yet, because he knew he was very close. The moon would rise soon anyway. So he kept going, careful not to lose track of the road, trusting it to lead him right. All the while he listened to every sound and every silence around him - the song of birds, the rustle in the undergrowth, the whispering of the wind, the silent shiver of an owl's wings, the inaudible voices of trees and earth and ancient stones - and he took in every movement around him, every change of air. It gladdened him that he still remembered how to move through a dark forest. At least he thought so; then he stumbled over a tree-root and almost fell, because he had forgotten to look where he put his feet. He laughed at that too.

At last the moon rose high enough to reach down between the entwined branches of the Druadan Forest, but still the wanderer almost walked straight into the fire, it turned up so suddenly in front of him. The trees opened into a clearing, just by the foot of the Eilenach mountain which rose towards the starry sky, only a little blacker than the night itself. The air was crisp, so cold there was frost glittering in the grass; winter's last effort before it went to sleep. The fire was reflected in billions of brittle jewels, glowing orange in the grass, and around it there sat four figures in long dark cloaks - four fey creatures, as old as spring itself it seemed. The wanderer quickly withdrew into the shadows again. It had always amused him to be invisible.

Warily, Legolas looked over his shoulder. "Did you hear that?"

"I heard a squirrel," Elrohir said.

"It was no squirrel."

"No? I can see it. It's over there."

He pointed to a tree some paces away from the wanderer. A squirrel sat there all right, for once completely still. The wanderer smiled.

"I heard something else," Legolas insisted.

"Maybe another squirrel," Gimli suggested, poking a stick into the fire to push the burning logs closer together. They had a pot hanging from a wooden tripod over the flames, and whatever was in it smelled fantastic to someone who had been walking through a cold forest all evening. "The horses would know if something was near, wouldn't they? You always say they are so intelligent."

The wanderer had forgotten to look for the horses, but when he looked around he saw both Roheryn and Arod grazing at the edge of the clearing, beside a little stream that came down from the mountain. It would have been very funny to sneak away with them, as revenge, but he knew the elves would hear him if he tried to move. Despite Elrohir's sardonic remark he was on his guard, as was Elladan. They had seen too much of danger to take chances. The wanderer knew it; he was like that himself.

He put his hands to his mouth and gave a very low whistle.

_I am here, where are you?_

The elves swung around, groping for weapons that weren't at their sides. They had left them along with their packs some paces away, and the wanderer could see them regretting it. In the moment before one second ended and the next began, the wanderer could see in their eyes that they were preparing for battle; he knew they were calculating the possibilities of reaching their weapons before the enemy reached them, advantages and disadvantages their surroundings might give them, what sort of enemy might be watching them and how many and with what intentions. The wanderer knew they did all this because he would have done the same. Only Gimli didn't stir - not because he wasn't as skilled a warrior as they, but because he was not used to hiding and scouting, or to dangers hidden in dark woods.

"That's a wren, if you were wondering," he said. "Nothing to be afraid of. They're quite common."

Legolas winced at the sound of his voice; you weren't supposed to talk when enemies might be near, every warrior of Eryn Galen knew that.

"Keep quiet," he hissed, probably fiercer than intended because his mind was already set on fighting. "I'm trying to listen."

There was silence so thick you could have cut it with a knife. Even Gimli groped for his axe - he had put it within an arm's reach - but he watched the elves, not the woods, knowing they would see whatever was hiding before he did.

The wanderer whistled again. _I am here, where are you?_

Elladan hesitated, glancing at the others elves who did not move, then whistled back: _I hear you, I am here!_

"I know you're there, Elladan," the wanderer replied, grinning, and stepped out into the clearing. "I've been looking straight at you for the past ten minutes." And he pushed the hood back from his face.

He hadn't thought it would be possible, but somehow it became even more quiet. Gimli's mouth fell open. The elves simply stared.

The smug grin on the wanderer's face broadened a smile. Of all things he had missed from his old life, he had never missed mountains or battles or walking as much as he had missed this: a small campfire beneath the stars, with friends around it. The laughter escaped him before he could hinder it, and once he had started he did not want to stop. Let them think he was a fool. He would love them anyway.

"Will you look at that," Elrohir said, trying to sound sarcastic. "Strider is back."

"He sure is," the wanderer said cheerfully, and finally the others smiled too. It had been so long since they saw this man - this ragged, quiet, thoughtful man, with a smile hidden behind the steel of his eyes, a story on his lips, a song on his mind. Elessar they had never known, but Strider was their friend.

"I am sorry," Aragorn said, "for taking so long. I have been a fool. Also, I couldn't find my horse."

Roheryn gave a whinny from the edge of the clearing, as if he knew they were talking about him. It took a moment before Legolas understood, and then he blushed.

"I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for."

"You could have taken another horse."

"I know. I said, nothing to be sorry for."

He stepped closer to the fire, lifting the heavy rucksack from his shoulder with a sigh of relief and putting it down carefully on the ground. But when he looked at Legolas again, the elf was still frowning.

"I wouldn't have taken Roheryn," he said, struggling to find the right words, "but I figured... I figured if I did, you might come after. Because you wanted him back as soon as possible, I guess? And I thought maybe somehow you'd understand that... Gimli told me not to but I thought it would be worth a try. But I really was an idiot, Estel, and I knew, and I'm sorry..."

Aragorn shook his head. "We've been idiots both of us, and believe me, I've been a bigger idiot than you. You were right, all the time. You all were," he said, looking to the others. He could see that Gimli needed no explanation, that Elladan understood, and that Elrohir was content that he had come at last, at least for now. It was all very much like them, just as it was like Legolas to be the one to take Roheryn, for he was as impulsive as any wood elf.

_On the inside he is crying._ Of course Legolas, who had never cared for tradition and never tried to hide how much he hated formality, could not understand what hindered Aragorn from being Strider.

Aragorn put a hand on his shoulder. "I don't want to talk about it," he said. "What's done is done. I just want to be here, now. Let's forget everything else."

Maybe some other time, if they needed it, he would explain everything. But he was tired of words. He was tired of his own mind. And he was very hungry.

"It's over," he said. Legolas embraced him, relaxed at last, and nothing more needed to be said after that.

"So," Aragorn said as Legolas let go of him, "since you have been waiting for me, is there possibly any food waiting for me too? Mine didn't last very long."

Gimli grinned and nodded at the pot. "Now that's the Aragorn I know. We've been making far too much food for the last two days, in case you'd show up - Éowyn passed us three days ago, and we thought you'd be right behind her. Help yourself."

Aragorn dug into his rucksack for a bowl and a spoon and Elrohir moved aside to give room for him on the sheepskin they had laid out on the grass. For some time they were all silent, the elves gazing at the stars, Aragorn eating, Gimli bringing out his pipe. While Aragorn didn't always smoke when there were elves nearby, Gimli seemed to have made a sport of doing it as often as possible. It was just as well, Aragorn thought when he had eaten two full bowls of chicken soup, because if Gimli smoked, there was no reason he shouldn't.

"So what about Imrahil?" Elrohir asked at long last. He was laying on his back now, ignoring the frost in the grass. The stars were unbelievably sharp, the moon so big it looked as though you might have reached it from the top of Eilenach. "Won't he feel a bit abandoned?"

"Arwen and Faramir are going," Aragorn said. "Arwen wasn't really keen on setting off when it was raining so much, but to be honest I think she liked the prospect of being in charge of the whole retinue. It's odd, but she's kind of fond of the whole being a queen thing."

He pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms loosely around them, thoughtful. He missed her already. It always felt strange to wake up in the mornings and not have her beside him. If it was absolutely quiet, and he listened as intently as he ever could, he used to hear her breathing, slow even breaths that only barely made her chest move. Sometimes when he woke early he looked at her and he just couldn't stop smiling, because she was so beautiful. He wished he could see what she saw, with her eyes focused far away in elven dreams. He wished he could be with her there, as anywhere else.

But this night he wanted to forget. With Arwen came Minas Tirith, and the overwhelming weight of his crown. Sure - if he decided to abdicate, to abandon the throne and flee, she would follow him. But would he ever be able to look into her eyes again?

No, this night he wanted to pretend he had no ties to anything. Leave those thoughts to tomorrow, or to someday next week. It was one of those nights when the air seemed to vibrate with magic, so beautiful you couldn't even begin to grasp it. _Think of that instead. No, think of nothing; just be here, now. The stars are calling for Strider. Forget that you were ever Elessar._

For the rest of that evening they kept the fire alive, told stories of the old days and laughed at bad jokes. The moon made its slow way across the sky, the frost glittered in the grass, and they remembered every battle they had ever been in, every camp they had made, every road they had taken. It should have been cold, but somehow the elves radiated warmth, and the cloak of Lothlorien kept the winds away. They sat there for hours; time just ran away, and at the same time it seemed the night would go on for ever, and all the other nights they had shared were the same as this one, and everything in between had only been dreams.

Sometime when the moon was already on its way down Aragorn fell asleep. The song that they had been singing trickled into his dreams and filled them with summer.

* * *

He woke early, shivering in the cold morning air. Dawn spread a pale grey light across the sky. One by one the stars were fading away.

"By the graces of the Valar," Aragorn groaned, curling up beneath his cloak. "How many times do I have to tell you not to let the fire die?"

"It's not cold," came Elladan's voice from some paces away.

"It's freezing."

Elladan laughed, a clear merry sound so annoying Aragorn would have gotten up, walked over to him and hit him very hard on the head till he shut up, if only that hadn't involved getting up.

"Not if you're up and moving."

Aragorn could see him through his cloak - he had pulled it up over his head to keep his face warm - kneeling beside the still smoking ashes of the fire, rolling their two sheep skins into a tight bundle. A bit further away, either Elrohir or Legolas was fastening another bundle with a strap around Arod's back. The tripod had been taken down - the three thin branches had been untied and thrown in a careless heap - and Roheryn was carrying the pot, hanging from his saddle bags in a chain.

"I take it there will be no breakfast," Aragorn said.

"That's right, little brother."

"Remind me why I travel with you freely."

Elladan just smiled and kept working. Aragorn considered staying where he was, but the blanket he was laying on wasn't of elven make; it had become very damp. Reluctantly he dug his way out of the folds of the Lothlorien cloak and stuck his head into the morning.

Pale blue was spreading over the sky, but the clearing was still grey, tinted with a fine layer of crisp frost. The forest was blue-green. Thin veils of mist coiled around the feet of the mountain.

The colours were already returning; pale blue and pink in the sky, cold blue-green and greyish brown in the forest, shimmering emerald in the high grass that covered the foot of Eilenach. Gimli was still sleeping on the other side of the fire; Elrohir stood over by the horses, and Legolas sat above him on a branch, eating an apple with his legs dangling in the air.

Aragorn rose, shaking life into his legs. He found another apple in Legolas' pack and ate it while he rolled up the blanket and swept the cloak around him. All the previous nights he had slept in barns or on little roadside inns, which had brought a lot of memories back, but this was even more like the mornings of his old life - the feeling of damp, sweaty clothes, wrinkled and in disarray, head and shoulders aching from sleeping on hard ground, hair all messy; shivering and sniffling until the first bleak sunlight warmed him up. His boots were cold as he pulled them on, and his stiff fingers struggled with the belt clasp before he managed to close it. He had earth and dead leaves and blades of grass everywhere, even plastered to his cheek. And he laughed to himself again, just because he could.

When Elrohir returned from the horses, the sky was turning yellow just above the tree-tops. He had thrown his cloak casually over one shoulder and strapped the sword belt around his waist. "We should get going."

"That's right," Aragorn said, "where are we going?"

Gimli, who had just woken up and sat shivering swept in his cloak, grinned. "Why, where ever we want. That's the point, after all."

"And where is that?"

"Well," Elladan said, hitching his rucksack onto his shoulder, "as long as you don't say the Brown Marches, or the Path of the Dead or why not Lord Rafthir's estate, we thought you might decide."

"Well then," Aragorn said. He didn't need to think for a second. "Then I say we follow the old forest road, because I don't remember where it leads. And then I say we should go west."

He left the others to their chores and walked up the side of the mountain, the cloak trailing behind him in the grass. There was a butterfly, dancing around a stand of cowslips just a few paces from him; it was the first It was bright yellow, just as the sky was turning a bright blue when the sun rose above the mountains of Ephel Dúath.

When he had come so high up he could see over the treetops, he sat down on a rock in the grass and saw the forest stretch out before him, then the grasslands, then Anduin and Osgiliath. All the way to the sun could he see, and he sat there and thought of nothing special and it was warm in his face, and spring was coming, and there was not a single cloud on the sky.

"Aragorn!" they called from below. They had left the camp and were already at the edge of the forest, in the shade of the trees where mist still coiled around the trunks, and where the old forest road led the way to forgotten places. "Are you coming?"

Aragorn stood up. Before him the East folded out like a tapestry of green and gold and shimmering blue, dotted with the white of cities. Before him was his kingdom, the land he had had been meant to have, the land he had fought for even before he knew it was his. Before him was his birthright, his heritage, his fate. His Gondor. Before him was Arwen, and the prize he had paid to get her.

"I'm coming," he said, and turned his back on it, and walked down the slope towards the west.

* * *

TBC

It seems to me the next chapter will be uploaded reasonably soon. Or maybe this chapter was updated unreasonably late because it's so freaking scary to publish a new chapter. Always something wrong.

Thanks for reading, and please, please leave a review! :)


	6. The King

**The King**

The old forest road struggled on for a while, winding this way and that over the western slopes of the Eilenach and back into the dense dark Drúadan forest. When finally there was not a single cobble to be found, and they had found the last milestone lying face down amongst the ferns a long way back, Aragorn decided it was time to turn north and find the Great West Road.

They walked in shifting shadows and patterns of sunlight, over a soft floor of dusty leaves and wriggling roots that muffled all sounds. Ancient oaks and slender book-trees, rustling aspen and wide-armed elms; the hazels and sallows were just about to burst into green, pale trunks yearning for the rare spears of light that came through the branches above. Legolas said their voices were strong and Gimli said the ground was old and firm.

Most of the places they passed had never been trodden by Men before. The streams came tumbling down through the mountains in spring-flooded hurry, knowing there would be neither dams nor water-wheels hindering them on their way. The trees had never heard the strokes of axes, nor the tramp of woods-men's feet. The air whispered in the thimbleweed and laughed and moaned in the branches, breathed by no Man. And the night after they left Eilenach, when they camped in the shelter of some boulders thrice as tall as Aragorn, covered in lichen and sunken into the moss, they thought they saw the drúedain, the wildmen of the woods. But not even the elves were sure. It could have been their own shadows dancing in the fire-light, or tricks played by the mist rising white in the dusk.

On the second day they found another road, but this one was new - barely more than a pair of wheel-tracks in the grass, but the boards laid over a stream for a bridge were fresh and newly used.

"Shall we follow it?" Elladan asked. "It must be leading to a settlement or something. Settlers in the wild don't usually like elves."

"Nor dwarves," said Gimli, "and not rangers either, I've understood."

"But we have no bread left," Legolas put in. "Barely any meat, unless we want to hunt, and I don't know what the drúedain would think about that."

They looked at Aragorn. They had promised that he should be the one to decide, and so when they couldn't agree the others let him have the last word so they could blame him if something went wrong.

Aragorn looked down the road. It seemed peacuful, with a ribbon of grass and coltsfoots in the middle, and the tracks of worn-down shoes and sturdy horse hooves imprinted in the earth after the last rain. He guessed the settlement would not lie in the forest itself, because it belonged to the drúedain. This was probsbly a short-cut from the Great West Road to some place near the edge of it.

"We'll follow it," he decided, and tugged at Roheryn's reins. Tender green leaves waved above their heads as they walked along. Spring had truly come at last, and the world was no longer grey.

Soon they saw green grasslands where the forest thinned out, and sun shining brightly between the trunks of the last trees. Morning fog rose from the grass and lay like veils in the valleys. On the hills the brisk wind had already blown it away. Some early stands of blue-bells bowed in the fringe of the forest. They came out of the forest blinking in the sun, and the first thing they found was a low fence and a wooden gate, sheep grazing on the hills behind it.

"This used to be wilderness, didn't it?" Legolas asked as he led Arod through the gate.

"I would say it still is," Aragorn replied. "But no one has lived here before - not ever, I think. It's all the soldiers from the war who have retired and need someplace to live. And those who have left the cities, now that they don't need walls to feel safe."

Gimli gave a laugh. "No walls to feel safe! Can you imagine. I thought that day would never come."

As they followed the dusty road between the hills and copses of oaks and elms, Aragorn hoped the people living out here at the very edge of the wild were right to feel safe. It was close to the mountains, and there were wargs left up there in meager isolated forests, and maybe even goblins in unexplored caves. No lord presided over Anórien but him, and he had never thought to send soldiers here. He had thought the wild would prefer to be left to itself, so long as the Great West Road was safe for travellers. For hungry wolves and homeless goblins and all the wretched creatures who had lost their purpose when the Enemy fell, the sight of so many sheep so easy to steal would be irresistable.

The sheep followed them as they walked, some keeping their distance, others coming very close and _baaing_ at the elves in wonder. When they came down into a valley where another bridge crossed a stream, they saw two girls and one little boy watching them from the crest of a hill, slings in hand. Aragorn waved. The children turned and ran down the hill. When Aragorn and the others came to the very same crest, they saw the settlement below, and the children running towards it.

There were three houses huddled close together, already grey and weathered though they could not have stood for more than a year. Barns and storage houses surrounded them, and there were little gardens in between, and clothes lines with laundry drying and hens pecking and a pen all dug up where some swine rested in the mud. There was another stream nearby with a water-wheel creaking in the rushing water, and a paddock where four horses went, about to lose their winter-coat, one carrying a foal. Three rowing boats were drawn up on the beach, and nets hung from wooden poles to dry.

As he saw it, Aragorn was filled with a sudden pride. It surprised him greatly because what he should feel, or what he would have thought he would feel, was sadness - sadness because that which had always been wilderness was wilderness no longer, and the world he loved, the untamed world of songs and stories, was shrinking. But all he saw was how prosperous this tiny village looked, how well-fed the sheep were even this early in spring, how startingly white the laundry was, and how good it must be for the families living here to have found such a perfect spot to live.

"Come," he said, and tugged once more at Roheryn's reins to make him follow, but the others hesitated.

"Maybe you should go alone," Elrohir said uncertainly. "Just go down and see if they can spare anything, and then come back. I think that's better. Then they won't know we're not Men."

"People aren't as afraid of elves as they used to be," Aragorn said. "Nor of dwarves. They know what you did in the war."

"But still," Elrohir persisted, and the others nodded in agreement. "They'll ask questions."

"Which we don't have to answer."

But they had already made up their minds, and Aragorn knew elves and dwarves well enough to not try to change them. He swept the cloak about him, because the wind on the hill was cold, and left Roheryn with the others. When he came to the foot of the hill he turned, and saw only the horses. The others had sat down in the tall grass and not even he could see them. It was as though they had never been there.

Sadly Aragorn thought that of the five of them, he was the only one who had won the War. He was the only one who would remain and be remembered. Well, Elessar would - Strider would not make it into the chronicles or the history books or the essays of the learned, and his years as a ranger would be mentioned only briefly in the annals of the Kings of Gondor as if they had been of no importance at all.

Perhaps it was a sad thing, and perhaps it was not. Strider was after all a legend, and legends don't always do well to be written. He was part of the old world, where strangers waited around the corner and adventure knocked on your door and dragged you away without handkerchiefs, where elves sang in the woods and dwarves sang in the mountains and dragons roared and breathed fire. That world would not last, and if the world wasn't there, Strider could not be there either. Perhaps it ought to be just a memory, a story told by trees and streams and stars on quiet nights when no other sounds were heard.

"Can I help you, m'lord?"

Aragorn jumped, startled from his thoughts. A sturdy woman with a child on her arm, and one of the herdgirls clinging to her skirts, had left the village and watched him warily from a few paces away. Behind her, among the houses, some other villagers had paused in their chores and looked on.

"Ah - yes, you can. Forgive me. My name is Strider," he said; it was the first thing that came to mind. The woman cocked her head slightly at the odd name, but she did not look unkind, so he went on. "My friends and I are just passing through, but we've run out of supplies. Do you have anything to spare?"

"I thought as much," the woman said. "I'm sorry, but we don't have very much. Well, salted fish we've got lots of, and maybe some bread."

It surprised him, because neither the woman nor her children seemed to be starving, and the winter had after all been mild. "Forgive me," he said, "I don't mean to doubt you, but how comes it you have so little in the way of supplies?"

"Don't stand here gawping," the woman said, looking at the little girl. "Go back to the sheep, and take Luth with you. I see what you mean," she said, turning to Aragorn again, as the girl left them. "We haven't gone hungry all through the winter - not an ounce of bark did I have to put in the bread - and we had lots of food left until yesterday. Then the nobles came by."

"What nobles?"

"How should I know? They'd been to the Glílenn family first - they live across those hills - but didn't get all they wanted there, so they went to us, and now they've gone to the upstreams village too. How could any of us possibly feed a whole long line of riders and horses and cattle and whatnot?" The woman looked grim, but not exactly upset, as if it was only to be expected. "My name's Lhinn, by the way, if that's of any interest."

"Certainly," Aragorn said, and meant it. "And the village? What is it called?"

"We call it Little Ropemaker Street, because we used to live at the Ropemaker Street in Minas Tirith. And the village downstream we call the Mudhole, but they call it Whale-town, like it was a town. They're from the coast, so they're quite odd, but decent enough."

"And the Glílenn family?"

"Yes? From Osgiliath originally, I think, but then they lived in Minas Tirith."

Aragorn had had no idea so many lived here. "You seem to be faring well, when there are no nobles around."

Lhinn nodded, a faint smile tugging at her lips. "Sure are. Well, it's harsh sometimes, and this winter a couple of sheep were taken by who-knows-what - sounded like wolves, but no wolf ever was that big and fierce as those we saw on the hills that night. But we manage."

"At least you pay no taxes," Aragorn said. It had been decided that those who wanted to try their luck at building farms in the wilderness wouldn't pay any taxes for the first ten years. But Lhinn shook her head.

"I'd happily pay taxes if the King sent soldiers to protect us. And if he could protect us from the nobles. I wouldn't think it of any other king or steward I ever heard of, but King Elessar, I think he would tell the nobles not to take so much, if only he knew how much they take."

"But I... The King's Law states that it is not allowed to take more food or supplies than anyone is willing to spare. Did those nobles steal from you?"

"There's no lord here," Lhinn said, shrugging, "and so there is no law. They did not threaten us, but they demanded and then we obeyed. Maybe they didn't know how much we would need for ourselves. Though more likely they did not care."

How much he had missed, never having been out to see things for himself. The emissaries he had sent out to look over the kingdom, the lords and mayors he had asked, had never told him about anything like this. Perhaps they did not know. Perhaps the emissaries in their royal uniforms, with noble horses and proud words, looked too much like the lords they represented, so that no one would dare to complain in front of them.

Lhinn shook her head again, then smiled. "Never you mind that! Spring's come, and soon there'll be plenty of food again. Last autumn we made offerings to the drúedain and they let us hunt in the forest, not much, just as much as we needed. Let me get you some bread and cheese and some salted fish. That we can spare. They took all our ale, though."

He followed her into the village and to a storage house that did not look older than half a year. It was indeed rather empty, but some things she found and gave to him, and he noted that the bread loaves were generously large, as if the one who baked them were sure the flour would last for many more, and there was plenty of large salmon and trout that revealed the river was good for fishing. Lhinn wrapped three fishes in a cloth, as well as roll of cheese and two loaves of bread. Aragorn realised it must be more than she could spare without risking hunger herself by the end of the month, but he would pay her back - yes he would.

One last thing he promised before he left, his arms full of food.

"Keep being respectful to the drúedain, and I will make sure the King's Law will always be followed even out here."

Lhinn smiled, as if she thought it was kind words but nothing more, and waved goodbye. Aragorn smiled too, because he knew he would keep the promise.

_When?_ he wondered, as he walked up the hill to where the Gimli and the elves were waiting. _I can do nothing out here. When will I go back?_

Soon, he promised, and found it did not sound as bad as he would have thought. A part of him had always missed the warmth and comfort of his bedchamber, and perhaps it was more to it than that.

* * *

"If the nobles, whoever they are, went upstream," Elrohir said, "then the logical thing to do is to go downstream. Right?"

"I want to know who they are," Aragorn replied. "I bet they don't even realise it, but they have broken the law, and when I get back I want them to know it."

"And how are you going to explain how you know they have broken the law?" Elladan asked. "You're supposed to be severely ill back in Minas Tirith. They will want to know."

"I'll find a way," Aragorn said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. The immediate problem was to find out who the noblemen were, and since none of the villagers were sure about the colours of their banners - some said they had been red and yellow, others green and blue, or was it grey? - he had to go and see them for himself. Aragorn suspected there might be more than one lord. He supposed they were on a leisure hunt, or possibly on their way to Rohan for some reason, and in any case there might well be a lot of them.

"Look," Aragorn said, "they have taken food from the villagers so that they may have to go hungry. If the crops go wrong or if for any reason they don't get any fish, they might starve, and they have nowhere to go if that happens. We have to help them, but we also have to make sure it does not happen again, and then we have to know who did it."

"He is right," Legolas said suddenly. "It's not actually about what we want. And it's not like they will see us, not if we don't want it."

"Well I am not scared," Gimli said. That settled the matter. If it came to a question of courage, the twins were always quick to take the risk.

They rounded the foot of the hill, took the long way around the village and climbed over the fence at a place where a broken board allowed the horses to step over it, the sheep _baaing_ farewell to the elves behind them. The three children that had first seen them watched them at safe distance as they left, slings still in hand. The wild was a hard place to live, Aragorn thought, and supposed even the children were used to it.

When the village was lost to sight behind the hills, they walked back to the river and followed close to it. Some trees protected them from the wind here, but the sun came slanting down from another angle, and it soon became so warm Aragorn and Gimli took off their warm woolen tunics and fastened them to the saddle bags. The cloaks they kept, in case they met someone they wanted to hide from.

It was late afternoon when they found the Whale-town, or the Mudhole - the latter name was perhaps more fitting - but no nobles. Aragorn went down alone again. The nobles had indeed been there, but it did not bother the inhabitants of the Mudhole so much, because the fine lords had promised to take care of a couple of bandits that had come very close to the village the previous night.

"You're sure?" Aragorn asked. "Bandits?" There had been very few bandits in Gondor since peace came, and those few there were kept to far-off roads where merchants went but not many soldiers, such as the Great West Road. But the road was now miles to the north. A bandit would not gain much from attacking a village, and if it was true as the villagers said, and there were only two of them, it was rather likely they would be chased off before they could steal anything at all.

"We only saw them at distance, of course," the man he was talking to said, "but they looked suspicious, that much I know."

"Suspicious how?" Aragorn asked. "What did they look like?"

"Cloaked," the man said. "Cloaked and hooded. Rather tall, I should think, and at least one of them had a sword. The other had a quiver. Come to think of it, rather like you."

"And where did they go?"

"They came from the east," the man said, "from the forest. Then they crossed the river at the ford, and then we lost them. But those lords that were here, they promised to take care of them. They said that was what they were here for. They'd been following them for days."

"So the lords have crossed the ford?"

The man nodded. Aragorn thanked him, went back to the others, and together they waded through the swift stream and found the tracks of horses in the mud on the other side. Horses and cart-wheels, and lots of them. They followed the tracks westward.

Truly they were rangers again, Aragorn mused, as they walked as quiet as shadows through the grass in the reddening afternoon light. Mist was rising from the river behind them, and the eastern side of the mountains to their right was already black with night. A breeze rustled in the grass and they swept their cloaks about them.

The sun sank at last behind the dark contour of the Firien wood in front of them. For a few minutes it glowed red between the outer trees; then it was gone, and there was only a faint grey light left to guide them. The grasslands turned a bluish grey. When Aragorn glanced at the others there was a pale shimmer about them. Gimli had pulled up his hood to ward off the cold, and the stars gleamed in the others' hair. They looked wild, like creatures out of an old story.

Elladan stopped some paces ahead, and sank into a crouch in the grass.

"There are two sets of tracks leading away from the others," he said, scanning the trampled dew-strewn ground. "Two men have been walking."

"Running," Elrohir corrected him. He had already passed his brother and was searching the ground further away from the main track of the lord's retinue. "About here they started running."

Aragorn gave Roheryn's reins to Legolas, who was no tracker, and crouched down to search for tracks even further from the place where Elrohir stood. The shallow imprints in the earth told him there had been two men, either very heavy or carrying something heavy. They had been running but not panicking, and one of them had a bad leg that made his stride uneven. They could have come from the retinue of the lords, or they could have passed just before it, or after; the grass they had trampled down had not straightened yet, so it could not be more than a few hours ago.

"Maybe those nobles sent out scouts?" Gimli suggested.

"Could be," Aragorn said, "but it would make more sense to send out scouts towards the mountains. Besides, even if there might have been wolves or even goblins down here, a retinue this size would scare them off long before they saw them. They would never be in any danger."

"Can you see if the retinue has been following a path already made?" Legolas asked. "Because if they did, those bandits could have walked there before them, and the nobles followed."

Elladan nodded eagerly. "I see what you mean. The bandits saw they were being followed and left the path, but the nobles didn't notice, because they aren't rangers, so they kept to the path."

"That could be it," Elrohir said. "There's no telling if there has been a path here or not, but even if it hasn't, the nobles could just have kept going in the same direction, or maybe they thought the bandits were heading for the forest."

"Whoever made these tracks," Aragorn said, straightening, "knew how to walk through grass without leaving much trace. They did not want to be followed."

"So," Gimli said, "we might have found the bandits, but do we follow them or the nobles?"

"The bandits," Aragorn said. "If they truly are bandits, then they are a more pressing matter."

So they set off again, very slowly now, bent over the tracks. The darkness grew deeper, the shadows blacker, but the night sky shimmered with stars. After a while Aragorn had to leave the tracking to the twins, for it was too dark for him to see anything. Yet it was Gimli who found what they were looking for.

"There's a fire, over there! Could it be them?"

They all sank down in the grass, and Legolas whispered to the horses to stay still and quiet. On top of a hill not very far from them, almost hidden behind a copse of trees nearly the size of a forest, there was the red glow of a small camp-fire. There was the shadow of one sitting beside it, and undoubtedly there was at least one more there.

Legolas unfastened his bow from Arod's saddle and strung it. "I'll stay here with the horses. Go carefully."

"Better if I stay," Gimli said. "You are quieter than me."

"Stay both of you," Elladan whispered, "in case there are more of them, and they see you."

As quickly and quietly as they could, they took their weapons, and Legolas led the horses down into a valley where they would not be seen, Gimli beside him. Aragorn and the twins crept down the other side of the hill, hurrying between bushes and large stones, keeping to shadows where they could. Through the valley they walked, hidden in the grass, and through a stand of slender elms, and up on the next hill. When they neared the top they lay down flat in the grass and crept on so slowly even the trees barely noticed.

There was the fire, a small but cheerful one, skillfully made so that it would smoke as little as possible. Four men sat around, clad in dark brown and green cloaks, with their hoods pulled over their faces. Some bundles and packs were stacked at the foot of a tree, and they had just taken a pot from the fire and were eating in silence from wooden bowls that had seen much use. Aragorn couldn't see any of their faces, but he saw their weathered scarred hands, their worn-out boots, their ragged cloaks and travel-stained packs. One set his bowl aside, brought out a short, crooked pipe and stuffed it. When he leaned towards the fire searching a burning stick to light it with, the warm glow fell on his face.

With a yelp, Aragorn flew up from his hiding place, and the twins did the same beside him.

"Aegas! Aegas!"

"Rhovalinn!" Elrohir exclaimed, as one of the other men turned.

"Aragorn!"

Aegas climbed to his feet and almost jumped right over the fire in his eagerness to reach them. Rhovalinn rose too, while Ast and Dínendu simply stared in surprise. Then they began to laugh, and once they had begun, they could not stop.

"Indeed you know how to show up when least expected!" Aegas said, grabbing Aragorn by the shoulders and beaming at him. "Since when do you not sit in that blasted citadel and write laws about cattle-keeping?"

"And you? Are you always going to live like this, out on the roads like a vagabond?" Aragorn grinned and squirmed out of his grip, only to be caught in a rib-crushing bear hug by Dínendu. "You should be arrested for loitering, all of you."

"Nah, not me," Dínendu said. "I´m a respectable man now, as you know. Rhovalinn too, I mean, as respectable as the bastard gets."

Rhovalinn grinned and limped back to sit by the fire. The leg had been troubling him since a warg bit him when he was still a boy, but it had not hindered him from being a ranger like the others. He was married now, and lived in Minas Tirith as a carpenter.

"The respectable life is nothing for me," Aegas said, searching the ground for his pipe, which he had dropped in the commotion. "I tried, you know, but I just can't stand to be in one place for so long. Call me a vagabond if you want, I don't mind."

"I never would," Aragorn said. "I understand you more than you'll ever know."

Elrohir went back to fetch Legolas and Gimli - it was a bit too far to shout, and they did not want to do it anyway, for Dínendu said the nobles had been following him and Rhovalinn for a couple of days now and were probably still near. The others sat down around the fire, Aegas sharing his pipe with Aragorn while Elladan demonstratively coughed.

"So we decided with Aegas and Ast long ago to meet here in spring," Dínendu said, stretching out his long broad legs and leaning so heavily on a young elm it bent backwards. "Some sort of reunion-journey or whatever. I suppose that's what you're doing too, huh?"

Aragorn nodded. "I haven't been out like this since - well, since I became king."

"Valar forbid," Aegas said and shuddered. "I would die if I was stuck like that, really, I would. Right, Ast?"

"Uh huh," Ast said. He was not exactly a man of words.

"We're on the way to Rohan," Rhovalinn said. "Though we'll go north when we come to the Gap, head for the mountains, if they're passable. You'll come with us, right?"

"Sure!" Elladan said, at the same time as Aragorn shook his head.

"There's no time," he explained. "I cannot be away for too long. I was thinking about turning back at the border, just by the Mering Stream, and if we keep going at this pace that will be perfect. You knew that, Elladan," he said, as his brother started to protest.

"But I did not," Aegas said firmly, "and I say that's ridiculous. You're the King, aren't you? You do what you want!"

"I do not," Aragorn said, "and I will not. Listen, I don't want to explain it all over again..."

"But I don't see the problem!" Rhovalinn straightened and looked at him eagerly. "No one knows, right? I mean, they don't know you're here. And those nobles - you don't have to worry about them, they'll never find us, we've been tricking them for days; got them to try ride across a swamp once, you should have heard them cursing. Worse than goblins on a sunny day, I'm telling..."

"Now you're rambling," Dínendu said warmly. "As always. Aragorn, old friend..."

"No," Aragorn said, with a sigh that was apologetic but not regretful. "No, Dínendu. I will not. I cannot."

"Yes you can," Ast said softly. "It would be very simple."

Ast was right, of course, as always, because Ast never took notice of what was right or wrong or what would happen afterwards. Yes, he could: he could keep walking. But could he return to Minas Tirith in summer and pretend like nothing had happened? No, he could not, and that was that.

Just then Elrohir returned with Legolas and Gimli and the horses, a welcome diversion, as Legolas knew some of the rangers and Gimli had met Rhovalinn, and Aegas forgot all about Aragorn when he saw that Roheryn was there and wanted to be cuddled with.

"I've got to tell you this, though," Rhovalinn said when they were settled again by the fire, all but Aegas, who had loved Roheryn ever since he was three years old and Aragorn let him sit on the horse's back for the first time. "I didn't believe it actually was you, but you haven't gone wholly unnoticed."

"What do you mean?" Aragorn asked, and felt the hair at the back of his neck rise.

"Rumours," Rhovalinn said in a low whisper, his eyes gleaming in the firelight. "We must have been behind you for some time, and then taken a short cut or something, because we heard them all. They say in the villages the King has been there. They think you are going about in secret asking the peasants if the lords treat them well and such, and if they aren't, then you'll make justice. They truly believe it about you, the villagers. The Wanderer King, they call you."

"The Wanderer King," Aragorn repeated. For some reason it sent a shiver down his back, but it was not a shiver of fear. He liked the name. He liked the sound of it. He liked to think that he belonged to it.

"To be honest," Legolas said, "that's about what we're doing. Not that it was planned. It just sort of happened."

"It's like they say," Elladan smiled. "Sometimes truth becomes legend, and sometimes legend becomes truth.

"In this case," Aragorn said, "I'm afraid it will only be a little true. Yes, we'll make sure the people of Anorien have the justice they deserve, but in the other villages we have passed things seemed fine, and this is a one-time journey. It will not happen again."

The others burst into fierce protests.

"There's no reason!"

"What good will come of that?"

"You're a ranger like you always were!"

Aragorn shook his head. Over the past days he had made up his mind, and strangely, he did not feel so bad about it. Well, he would miss the mountains, and the silence, and the loneliness of the wild. Most of all he'd miss the wild itself. But everything else he had.

It had come to him very slowly. First he had thought of how horrible it was to sleep on the ground, and how comfortable his bed in the citadel was. Then he had thought of how pleasant it was to be served food, always warm and well-made, seldom late, never less than he wanted. And then, to his surprise, he had realised that he missed not only Arwen (that was granted) but others too. He missed Master Ninquon's subtle humour, and counsellor Beren's down-to-earth explanation of philosophies that Aragorn, who had never come that far in his education before he left Imladris, would never have understood otherwise. He missed some of his body-guards, who had become his friends, and he missed Master Narion. He even missed Arwen's maid Maew, who could spend a whole breakfast droning on about the latest fashion, and painting up vivid pictures of how Arwen would look in this or that colour with this or that neckline.

That he missed them was not the reason he would not go on more journeys like this. He still wanted it with all his heart; he would always want it. But that he missed them made it possible. And if it was possible, then he would do it, for it still felt too risky. If people he had spoken to on the road, villagers he had thought had never seen him, had recognized him, then that settled the matter. It was too dangerous.

At long last the protests died out again.

"Have some food," Dínendu said and put the cold pot back over the fire. "Barley, just like the old days. Skillfully overcooked by Aegas, as usual."

"Spare your barley, we have bread, cheese and fish," Elrohir grinned, and walked over to Roheryn to fetch their provisions from the saddle bags. "Aragorn charmed some villagers. Just like the old days!"

That made them all laugh. Then Ast dug into his pack and found three bottles of Dorwinion wine (why didn't you say anything earlier? Aegas burst out, to which Ast only smiled) and that soon had them laughing even more. The retinue of the lords was forgotten by the time the third bottle had been opened.

Well into the night they sat by the fire with the trees rustling around them, and Elladan told the long and adventurous story of His and Elrohir's First Journey to Bree. Aragorn had heard it a billion times but he never tired of it, since Elladan always added new details, such as the chieftain of the wildmen wielding a flaming sword, the wolves being thirty and not three, or Barliman chasing them three times around the Prancing Pony with an axe and not a peel.

The sky was velvet black by the time the twins were safely back in Imladris again, the stars were glowing, and the moon was up. Aragorn always wondered how it looked to Ëarendïl, if, when he stood on his ship among the stars and looked down, he saw the dark earth like a mirror of the sky, with the lights of houses and the camp-fires of the wilderness glowing like stars. In that case he thought Minas Tirith would be the moon, great and white, though never dark.

Gimli began to sing, and for a while his voice was the only thing Aragorn had to think of. The trees went silent to listen. He lay down on his back in the tall green grass and saw the branches move above his head, and felt the warmth of the fire and the breath of a faint wind on his face. The eyes of the elves shone like stars. Stars in their eyes, a fire in his; or so people used to say - and maybe they were just mirrors of each other.

But when the fires of earth grew stronger, the stars faded. Aragorn thought of that though he tried not to, and it made him angry and sad, and worst of all it made him doubt, _again_ - because meeting the rangers here and hearing them begging him to stay had awakened something inside him. A wish.

It was not fair that he would have to go back to the citadel. After all he had done for Gondor, it was not fair. He wished Elessar could have been without him, that he could have taken that part of himself and put it down on the ground and told it to go home and be king.

But then there was Arwen.

No, he corrected himself, he did not wish not to be Elessar. A week ago that was how he felt, but in truth he had confused being king with being held in place: what he could not stand was not the citadel itself, but being unable to leave it on his own terms even for a short time.

Aragorn groaned and sat up, restless. There was nothing he was so genuinely tired of as his own thoughts.

"Where are you going?" Legolas asked when he rose, shaking some life into his legs.

"Nowhere special," Aragorn replied. "Don't worry, I won't go far. And I will come back," he promised, when the elf still looked anxious. Indeed it must have been a hard time for all of those close to him. He had noted how his friends sometimes treated him like something very fragile, likely to explode if handled too roughly.

He left the fire and the clearing and walked in among the dark trees. Their trunks were tinted with silver, and mist floated in and out between them. An owl rose like a shadow and sped towards the stars on silent wings.

It was good to walk. Roots lay hidden beneath the cover of last year's leaves, and in the darkness he had to watch carefully where he put his feet, but it was better to think of that than of what would happen when he came home. The trees whispered to each other. When he looked back, the glow of the fire was just a dot in the dark, a star, and all around him there was darkness.

At the very edge of the copse an oak grew by itself, and Aragorn sat down with his back to it, nestled betweem the mighty roots. He was cold, the grass was a little damp, and so he tugged the cloak of Lorien close and pulled up the hood. The grasslands spread out before him like a sea of silver and shadows, rolling hills and bowing grass and mist tumbling into valleys. From behind came the sound of elves singing, and a deep dwarven voice humming the melody. The earth breathed spring.

Aragorn closed his eyes and imagined it all gone, all lost to anything but memory. He could not. It was like imagining the sun would not rise in the morning, or winter would not turn to spring. Sometime when the moon lit up the Misty Mountains far to the north, he fell asleep.

* * *

Aragorn did not know what woke him. Perhaps it was the oak moaning, sensing the presense of something unknown. Perhaps it was a bird leaving its branches with a warning cry. Perhaps it was the soft rattle of chainmail, or the clink of a scabbard against an armoured leg.

He sat up straighter and warily looked around. Nothing moved through the grasses. Nothing stirred between the dark trees behind him. It could have all been a dream, but Aragorn had learnt long ago never to take that chance.

He pulled the cloak around him and crept in behind the oak, and huddled in its shadow he looked out again over the valley. From the clearing where he had left his friends came loud voices, singing and laughing. From the valley came nothing for a long while; then a twig snapped, a clear hard sound that rang through the stillness of the night, and was followed by a low curse. Aragorn held his breath. He pressed closer to the oak.

The first rider came up the slope of the hill.

He had no torch, and was visible only as a shadow in the grass. The horse's hooves were bound with cloth, so that they touched the ground with barely a sound, and over his polished breastplate he wore a dark cloak so that it would not gleam. Aragorn could not see his face, nor the device on his tunic; but he was a soldier of Gondor, a proud and prosperous one. A captain, surely, for a rich and powerful lord. After him came more soldiers, and more soldiers, and more soldiers, a long silent line of them.

They spread out. Whoever they were - and Aragorn thought he could guess - their aim was this very hill, and those that were on it. The captain rode around the copse and out of sight, but behind him he left enough soldiers to guard every inch of the slope. Aragorn shrank back further into the shadows. Soon they would be around the whole copse, if they weren't already. There was no way to escape.

Aragorn climbed to his feet. For the moment the soldiers seemed to stay where they were, waiting for orders, or for anyone trying to escape. They had not drawn their swords. Perhaps the nobles weren't so sure that it truly was bandits they were chasing, and would ask first and strike after. But there they stood, grim and silent, and they could just as well have been a wall of stone. From the clearing there came no longer any song. Perhaps the others had finally noticed.

Aragorn slunk into the woods. He kept to the shadows of the trees, and held the cloak of Lorien close. It shifted colour from moonlit bark to dark earth and lichen-covered branches as he moved, and all the time he watched his step so that not a single twig broke beneath his feet, not a single leaf shifted place. Hide me, he asked the trees, and though he was not a wood-elf, it seemed that they heard. When the glow of the fire grew out of the darkness around him, he let out a sigh of relief. It was always better to be many and together, than few and spread out.

"In the name of Gondor and King Elessar the First! A hundred soldiers are watching you. Put down your weapons and step into the light!"

Aragorn dropped down flat in the grass, the cloak over him. The worst curses anyone had ever taught him went through his mind, and none seemed enough. Of course, if there is one goblin there is a thousand behind him; and a king could not get caught in the wilderness without Lord Cambeleg being the one to catch him.

He moved on as quickly as he dared, and soon he saw the black shapes of horses and riders standing in a wide circle around the clearing with the fire. He stopped behind them and sank to the ground. Through the gap between the two nearest horses he could see his friends, trapped and outnumbered, with their weapons thrown on the ground. Aegas, Elrohir and Dínendu stood tall and defiant with their backs to each other. Behind Dínendu stood Rhovalinn, hiding his face, and though Gimli was still sitting he did not look defeated. Legolas had his back to Aragorn, but he was looking down and away from the riders, afraid to be recognized. Elladan held one hand on his brother's arm as if to hold him back. Ast was as still as a statue, his eyes fierce.

"So here are the bandits," Lord Cambeleg said coldly. "Not exactly what I had expected, I must say."

He towered over his captives on his great white horse, with cobalt blue reins and barding and a dark green cloak draped over the saddle. Behind him the blue and green banner of Pelargir waved slightly on its pole. He was not alone. There was also the stag of Amon Tírad, red on yellow, and before it Lord Rafhtir sat in a wide cloth-of-cold coat and a red plume flying from his horse's head, his wife Lady Hirvelui beside him in a red dress shimmering with gold threads, her hair bound on her head with golden ribbons. Rafthir looked grim and triumphant at the same time, as if this was a task that had to be done and he was glad to have done it. It struck Aragorn how loyal to him these lords were, or at least how loyal they tried to be - robbing villagers of their meager supplies, but wanting to save them from bandits all the same.

Another rider came forth, gazing down on the captives like a raptor watching its prey. The grey eagle of Rhinbar snapped behind her on a sky striped in purple and green.

"Some bandits, huh?" she said, laughing, and released her sword from her gloved hand. "Some of these are friends of the king himself. That one must be Gimli, Gloín's son?"

"He is," Gimli muttered, "and you are Lady Thoreth, who is a friend of Éowyn."

Lady Thoreth, Lord of Rhinbar, smiled down on him as if the whole situation amused her greatly. She wore a cloak made of eagle's feathers, and a circlet of claws and beaks. "Yes," she said, "I suppose I am a friend of Lady Éowyn, though do not think we are the same just because we are both women with swords. What are you doing here? There isn't much to see or do out here in the wilderness, and at least your friends the rangers are not out hunting." Here she looked at Dínendu and Rhovalinn, and they looked back, evenly.

"It is not forbidden to be travelling," Gimli said.

"No," Lord Rafthir said, "it is not. But you are in the company of very suspicious men. Who are these rangers? What are they doing here?"

Aegas spat. "What we are and what we're doing here is none of your business."

"Now, now!" Lord Cambeleg said. "Such words don't speak to your favour, good man. If you have no ill intentions, then there is no reason to not answer us, is there? The villagers around here have been worried. The least you can do, if you mean them no harm, is to asure them of that."

His reasoning was perfectly logical, and not too harsch at all. Aragorn found himself admiring it. Seeing it all from the outside he could understand the lords and why they acted as they did, and why this might not end well as easily as it could have. There was nothing in Aegaäs behaviour, or in the way Elrohir glared at them all or how Legolas hid his face, that seemed honest.

There was silence for a long while after Cambeleg had spoken, then Elladan rose. "We are merely out travelling. As you may know, it used to be our living, and..."

"I know you!" Lord Rafthir burst out. "I know this man, and that one like him too! They're the Queen's brothers. Now what are the Queen's brothers doing out here?"

"Like I said," Elladan said patiently, "we are..."

"Such a scandal this will be," Lady Hirvelui said with a wry smile. "The King's friend, the Queen's brothers, all sneaking around in the wild with bandits..."

"Bandits!" Dínendu said. "My good lady, we're not bandits, never were, never will be, we're just out walking!"

"Ooh, of course, out walking," Lady Hirvelui mocked. "Just a stroll in the garden, of course, of course! Where's the picnic basket and the parasols, I wonder?"

Lord Rafthir burst out laughing, and Cambeleg looked amused. Lady Thoreth said: "Perhaps my dear Hirvelui ougth to watch her tongue. Some do not understand innocent jokes."

"You speak truly," Lord Cambeleg said, though he was still sniggering. "My lords Elrohir and Elladan, we meant no offense. But what are you doing here? And in the company of these men? And who are you?" He looked at Ast, who glared at him. "And you?" Now he looked at Legolas, who said nothing. "I demand to know," Lord Cambeleg said, "for while I trust friends of the King and brothers of the Queen, I may not trust their company."

Crouching behind a small thorny bush, Aragorn closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his temples, thinking hard. Now they were in for it, unless he could think of something very, very quickly. Ast would refuse to say anything, because he despised aristocrats, and so would Aegas. It would make them look very untrustworthy. Dínendu and Rhovalinn could perhaps come up with a lie, for they could not risk their hard-earned reputations - very hard-earned, for even this far south where the dunedain had only been a rumour, they weren't easily trusted. But lies were often seen through, and the lords were looking for proof now that their suspicions had been half confirmed.

If the lords did indeed deem the rangers untrustworthy, probably criminal, and decided to bring them before justice, then that would put both Arwen and himself in a very delicate situation. Neither Elladan nor Elrohir nor Gimli would care much about their reputation in Gondor, but as brothers and friends of the royal couple, their reputation was as important as the king and queen's themselves. As for Legolas, he was not only a friend of the king but a prince - and a lord of Gondor in his own right. Not that the elves of Ithilien saw themselves as inhabitants of Gondor, but they lived and thrived there and were already regarded with suspicion.

"You do not answer," he heard Lady Thoreth say, interrupting his thoughts. "What are you afraid of? Why will you not show your face, you there? I can see only one reason. You do not want me to recognize you, do you?"

Aragorn looked up again. Between the two horses in front of him, two of Lord Cambeleg's soldiers, he saw Lady Thoreth urge her horse forward.

"You do understand, I suppose," she said, "that if I want to see your face I will see it."

"Lady Thoreth..." Lord Rafthir began, but before he could finish Legolas gave an angry growl and rose, pushing the hood back.

"There," he snapped. "There you go. You know very well who I am. And you would do well not to threaten me again, my lady, for my father is the King of Eryn Lasgalen, and he will not look kindly upon it."

It was the first time Aragorn had heard him use the new name of his father's kingdom, but it made sense. It was after all the correct name, and also proof of how much king Thranduil loved his son - at least if it was true that the forest was named after Legolas, but as far as Aragorn knew Legolas had never got a clear answer on that matter.

Lady Thoreth was not scared, but she let her horse take a respectful step back from the elf. Then she looked at Rafthir, and smiled again. "What were you afraid of, my lord? That it would be a werewolf hiding beneath the hood? Or perhaps something so horrendously ugly I could never recover from the sight? Either way you were wrong, I promise."

"No," Lord Rafthir said quickly, but he had gone very pale. "I was just thinking... well, here we have a lot of the king's friends - Lord Legolas too - and the king is back in Minas Tirith, very ill, and we haven't seen him since the queen left..."

"Yes?"

"Well," Lord Rafthir said, "I was thinking that what if it was... well... then it would be very, very bad to threaten him."

Lady Thoreth stared at him confusedly for a while, and then she burst out laughing. Lord Cambeleg fell in with her too. They laughed so hard they seemed likely to fall off their horses any second.

"It's not funny!" Lord Rafthir persisted. "What if it had been? Remember that the king has been a ranger too, and old habits die hard, they say!"

"I find it hard to imagine the king in this place, and with this company," Lord Cambeleg said, brushing tears from his eyes. "He is always so proper."

"You think?" Lady Thoreth said in surprise. "I do not. Oh, he keeps up a pretty good facade, but it's all lies, I'm telling you. You heard what they called him in the villages."

"Oh, true enough," Lord Cambeleg agreed. "He is not like the stern kings of old."

"No indeed! You should have seen the snow-ball fights they had around the citadel last winter. You weren't there, you wouldn't know, but oh how I wished I could have joined them."

"Well, why didn't you?" Rafthir muttered, still rather annoyed at being laughed at.

Lady Thoreth shook her head. "I do not know him so well, and I was not invited. Shame, really. He is an interesting man."

Lord Cambeleg smiled. "A legend, truly."

Before Aragorn knew it, he stood up. The next moment he was flat on the ground again, heart pounding madly, but he could not forget the first crystal clear image of what he ought to do. It was simple, truly. It was the answer to everything.

_Is it?_ he asked himself, frightened. _Is that what you consider a good plan? Is that what you consider sensible thinking?_

Not sensible, no. It was total madness. It was against every sense of reason. Not even the twins would have come up with that idea.

And at the same time it was not madness. When he thought of snowball fights outside the citadel, and planting gardens with Éowyn, and hiding in secret passages, it was not madness. When he thought of Arwen jumping in puddles and giggling when the court ladies gasped, or himself sparring with the Master of Arms at Dol Amroth and being soundly defeated for the first time in many years, it was not madness.

And he thought of Ninquon and Narion and Counsellor Beren, who would not judge him, not ever. He thought of Éowyn riding off without trying to hide, without trying to be someone she wasn't. He thought of Arwen, how lonely she had been when she came at first to the citadel, how many had feared her, and how she had gained trust and respect and friends just by being herself. He thought of what Faramir had told him about Lady Thoreth, how she had struggled to win respect when the lord of Rhinbar died and left her as his only heir, a sixteen-year-old girl who liked sewing and singing and daydreaming of knights on white horses, and how strong and secure she looked now, and how her men would follow her into a dragon's lair if she asked them - but how her sewing and singing were reputed far beyond Gondor's borders, because she had not changed, she had proved herself worthy just the way she was.

And he thought that when Lord Cambeleg said _a legend, truly_, he had no idea the King heard, and knew no special favours would come of his saying it.

And he thought of the villagers being robbed of their food, and he thought of the Wanderer King, and how he liked the sound of it, and how he liked to think that he belonged to it.

And he thought of his friends trapped at the hands of these lords who were only being loyal to the king, and how this might be the only way to save them from trouble.

So he rose again, determinded. He pushed back the hood. He straightened.

Then he stepped into the circle of horses, into the light of the fire.

* * *

The day comes when the Great West Road turns south and leads up the crest of a hill, and he sees Minas Tirith again.

It is a brilliant day with a bright warm sun in a clear sky, great and blue and ripe with spring, and the black and silver banners fly in the wind from the towers of the citadel. The road is dry and dusty, and tall green grasses wave on the hills.

Aragorn reins Roheryn to a halt on the hill, and there he stands for a few moments. The banners of Pelargir, Amon Tírad and Rhinbar snap behind him in the wind. He stands there triumphant, a king returning, in his ragged ranger cloak.

He had not intended to return with the lords, but the night after their meeting, he had a dream - one of those dreams that are so clear you cannot believe it wasn't real. Arwen was in it. She was sitting on a balcony in Dol Amroth with the sun in her hair and waves crashing against the cliff far below, and a book forgotten in her lap. In the dream he knew she longed for him. In the dream he knew that she was thinking of Minas Tirith, and how perhaps it was time to go back, and how she hoped that he would be there when she arrived, and how she trusted that he would.

He sat down beside her on the balcony, and felt as though he was truly there with she smoothed out her dress at her front, and let her hand rest for a while on her belly. In the dream she had understood, and Aragorn understood too.

"It will be quite different now," he said, laying his hand on top of hers, and feeling the growth of life beneath it.

She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder, and he knew that she wished for him to really be there, because she was anxious and everything would be easier once they were both home.

"Home," he said, playing with a lock of her dark hair.

"Yes," she said. "Will you be there when I return?"

He nodded. "I promise."

For a little while they sat in silence, dream wind blowing in their hair, dream waves crashing against the cliff, but the life that grew inside Arwen is no dream.

"We need to think of a name," he said.

She smiled again. "I already have. He is a child of the Eldar, and Eldarion will be his name."

As Aragorn stands on the crest of the hill and his kingdom lies before him, he knows that everything will be fine now. And as he stands there a wren swoops down from the blue sky, singing: _where are you? I am here!_

And the answer is simple.

He urges Roheryn into a gallop. The twins and Legolas and Lady Thoreth and even Lord Cambeleg set after him, whooping and hollering and laughing in the wind, and together they race down the hill towards the White City.

_Where are you? Where are you?_ the wren asks.

Aragorn stops, breathless and grinning, before the city gates. They are wide open.

"Home," he says, and then he rides beneath the arch, and up the street towards the citadel.

And the wren flies away over the wall, and the sky is blue and a western wind is blowing, and Aragorn is not afraid, not at all.

He has come home.

* * *

The end

I'll try not to make this an Oscar speech, but I want to thank everyone who has read, everyone who has favourited, and, especially, everyone who has taken the time to write me a review, however short. It helps, it really does. It's the only thing that keeps me going when I'm stuck, and I've been stuck a number of times with this story - which is why you've been so much needed, and which is why it feels so strange to be finished with it. What will I cry over now? What will my reason for consuming unhealthy amounts of tea be? Expect that it's tea, of course.

I also want to thank my beta Atiaran, again, though I suspect she won't read this. She has been amazing, I have probably been a nuisance, and that reminds me I should say I'm sorry to all you readers, for promising updates "within two weeks YOLO" when it took two months. Nope, I never imagined it would take ALMOST A YEAR to finish this story, but well... I'm a billion times wiser now. I've learnt so much. This is the first time (almost) I write a longer fanfiction and the first time (practically) I finish a whole story, fanfiction or not. Hopefully not the last! :)

A funny thing happened when I wrote this chapter. When I started out I had just as much problem as I have had with the previous chapters - that is, rewriting the same sentence over and over again, never getting anywhere, analyzing way too much and, simply, doing everyting the wrong way. But then, and I' not really sure how this happened, I just started writing. I didn't care if it was good or not. I didn't try to find the right way to begin a scene, or the most poetic way to describe that tree/hill/whatever. I finished it all in a little more than a week and I loved it the whole time. I don't know if anyone is interested, but I thought I'd share because I'm sure a lot of you are writers too and I'm sure a lot of you get stuck at times - and you know what? I think this is the best chapter of the whole story, because, finally, it came alive.

Tell me if you agree.

**So, one last time: thank you for reading. And please review! 3**

Disclaimer: Lady Thoreth is mine. You can't take her from me. Yes, I am allowed to fangirl over my own creations.


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